Cultural expressions of depression and the development of the Indonesian Depression Checklist

Abstract

Depression may manifest differently across cultural settings, suggesting the value of an assessment tool that is sensitive enough to capture these variations. The study reported in this article aimed to develop a depression screening tool for Indonesians derived from ethnographic interviews with 20 people who had been diagnosed as having depression by clinical psychologists at primary health centers. The tool, which we have termed the Indonesian Depression Checklist (IDC), consists of 40 items. The tool was administered to 125 people assessed to have depression by 40 clinical psychologists in primary health centers. The data were analyzed with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) (IBM SPSS AMOS Software). CFA identified a five-factor hierarchical model (χ ²  = 168.157, p = .091; CFI = .963; TLI = .957; RMSEA = .036). A 19-item inventory of the IDC, with five factors – Physical Symptoms, Affect, Cognition, Social Engagement and Religiosity – was identified. There was a strong correlation between the total score of the IDC and total score of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale (revised version CES-D), a standard tool for assessing symptoms of depression.

The IDC accommodates culturally distinctive aspects of depression among Indonesians that are not included in the CES-D.