Assessment of depression in a geriatric inpatient cohort: A comparison of the BDI and GDS

Abstract

"It was the purpose of this investigation to directly compare the BeckDepression Inventory (BDI) and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) in their ability toassess and classify depression in a geriatric inpatient population. A retrospective chartreview of 158 consecutively admitted patient’s medical records to a geriatric inpatientunit was conducted. Data collected from chart reviews included diagnoses, demographicinformation, scores on both the BDI and GDS, and scores from several neuropsychologicaltests. Items from both the BDI and GDS were factor analyzed to obtain orthogonalconstructs. In addition, the items of both the BDI and GDS were entered into a discriminantfunction analysis to investigate their ability to classify depression diagnosis. Finally,the factor scores and total scores from each questionnaire were correlated with measuresof neuropsychological function. The results indicated that both the BDI and GDS havemulti-factor structures and have questionable utility in the classification of depression.Furthermore, the Vegetative Symptoms factor of the BDI was found to significantlycorrelate with several measures of neuropsychological function. The results were discussedin terms of the relative clinical utility of these two self-report depression measures."