Recent literature has unfavorably compared self-report measures of depression to clinician-administered measures such as the Hamilton Rating Scale. In the present study, the Beck Depression Inventory and the MMPI D scale were compared to the Hamilton Rating Scale to assess the effectiveness of each measure in discriminating unipolar depressed psychiatric inpatients (n = 26) from inpatients without a major affective disorder (n = 11). Scores on the Beck scale and the MMPI Depression scale but not the Hamilton Rating Scale were significantly related to the diagnosis of unipolar major depression.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AbramsR.TaylorM. A.Unipolar and bipolar depressive illness. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1974, 30, 320.
2.
American Psychiatric Association.Diagnostic and statistical manual. (3rd ed.) Washington, DC: Author, 1980.
3.
BeckA. T.WardC. H.MendelsonM.MockJ.ErbaughJ.An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1961, 4, 53–63.
4.
CarrollB. J.FieldingJ. M.BlashkiT. G.Depression rating scales: A critical review. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1973, 28, 361–366.
5.
DonnellyE. F.MurphyD. L.Primary affective disorder: MMPI differences between unipolar and bipolar depressed subjects. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1973, 29, 303–306.
6.
HamiltonM. A.A rating scale for depression. Journal of Neurological and Neurosurgical Psychiatry, 1960, 23, 56–62.
7.
HammenC. L.Depression in college students: Beyond the Beck Depression Inventory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1980, 48, 126–128.
8.
HathawayS. R.McKinleyJ. C.The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. (Rev. ed.) Minneapolis, MN; University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
9.
LangevinR.StancerH.Evidence that depression rating scales primarily measure a social undesirability response set. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 1979, 59, 70–79.
10.
LewinsohnP. M.TeriL.Selection of depressed and nondepressed subjects on the basis of self-report data. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1982, 50, 590–591.
11.
LumryA. E.GottesmanI. I.TuasonV. B.MMPI state dependency during the course of bipolar psychosis. Psychiatric Research, 1982, 7, 59–67.
12.
MyersJ. K.WeissmanM. M.Use of a self-report symptom scale to detect depression in a community sample. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1980, 137, 1081–1084.
13.
PrusoffB. A.KlermanG. L.PaykelE. S.Concordance between clinical assessments and patients' self-report in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1972, 26, 546–552.
14.
WhiteJ.WhiteK.RazaniJ.The influence of sub-type of depression on self-rating scale validity. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, 1983.
