Original ArticlesScreening for major depression disorders in adolescent medical outpatients with the Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care
Section snippets
Sample
The sample was composed of 50 female and 50 male adolescents (12–17 years old) who consecutively received health maintenance examinations by faculty pediatricians. The outpatient practice site was located in a suburban, predominantly white, middle-class community near Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Approximately 75% of the adolescent patients served by this practice are female. After 10 months of recruitment, 50 girls had volunteered for the study, but recruitment was
Results
The mean BDI-PC score for the total sample of 100 adolescents was 1.87 ± 3.10, and the frequency distribution of the BDI-PC total scores displayed positive skewness (2.35) and kurtosis (5.55). Fifty of the adolescents had scores of zero. There were 11 (7 female and 4 male) adolescents with MDD, and 89 without MDD. The mean BDI-PC score of the 11 patients diagnosed with MDD was 9.09 ± 3.67, and the frequency distribution of these total scores was normally distributed, Kolmogorov–Smirnov D =
Discussion
The psychometric properties of the BDI-PC with adolescents are similar to those reported by Beck et al. 17, 21 for adults. The BDI-PC has high internal consistency for adolescents receiving routine, medical health maintenance examinations, and its total scores were not related to gender, ethnicity, age, or the diagnosis of any medical disorder. Furthermore, the mean BDI-PC score of the present 11 adolescents with MDD was comparable not only to the mean BDI-PC score of 7.92 ± 4.48 that Beck et
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