Depression Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Depression, including details on clinical depression, medication, symptoms, treatment, counselling, therapy.

Use of brief tools to measure depressive symptoms in women with a history of intimate partner violence.

Bonomi AE, Kernic MA, Anderson ML, Cannon EA, Slesnick N

Human Development & Family Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. bonomi.1@osu.edu

BACKGROUND: Nurses play a crucial role in the routine assessment of depression. However, brief depression assessment tools--necessary for busy clinical settings--have not been evaluated to identify depression in women with histories of intimate partner violence. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the utility of two 5-question subsets from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale in detecting depressive symptoms in women with abuse histories. METHODS: The sample comprised 448 women involved in police- or court-reported incidents of intimate partner violence who completed a questionnaire used to assess depression with the 20-item CES-D scale. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to identify score thresholds for two 5-question subsets from the CES-D for detecting (a) depressive symptoms and (b) severe depressive symptoms. Depression prevalence was estimated using score thresholds identified in the ROC analysis. The discriminating ability of the CES-D question subsets was also evaluated. RESULTS: Using thresholds identified in the ROC analyses, sensitivities ranged from .94 to .95 according to the CES-D question subsets for depressive symptoms and .97 to .98 for severe depressive symptoms. Specificity ranged from .73 to .87. Depression prevalence according to the 20-item CES-D was 84% for depressive symptoms and 67% for severe depression. Depression prevalences were 81%-84% (depressive symptoms) and 72% (severe depressive symptoms) using the CES-D question subsets. The two CES-D question subsets were comparable in their ability to identify minor and severe depressive symptoms, using the 20-item score as the gold standard (area under the curve range = .96-.97). DISCUSSION: Two brief question subsets were effective in identifying depression and can be used by nurses to assess depression in women with histories of abuse.

Published 22 May 2008 in Nurs Res, 57(3): 150-6.
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