Original Articles
Screening for major depression disorders in adolescent medical outpatients with the Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care

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Abstract

Purpose: To ascertain the psychometric characteristics of the Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care (BDI-PC) among adolescents (12–17 years old) scheduled for health maintenance examinations, and to determine the effectiveness of the BDI-PC in screening the adolescents for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, major depression disorders (MDD).

Methods: The BDI-PC was administered to 50 male and 50 female adolescents who received pediatric health maintenance examinations. The diagnosis of MDD was established with the Mood Module from the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders.

Results: The internal consistency of the BDI-PC was high (Cronbach alpha = .88), and it was not significantly associated with gender, ethnicity, age, or having a medical disorder. A cutoff score of ≥ 4 had both 91% sensitivity and specificity rates for identifying adolescents with and without MDD.

Conclusions: The BDI-PC is a useful instrument for screening for clinical depression in adolescents receiving routine medical examinations.

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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