The Depression Inventory Development Workgroup: A Collaborative, Empirically Driven Initiative to Develop a New Assessment Tool for Major Depressive Disorder

We report here an overview of the Depression Inventory Development initiative, including results of the third iteration of items assessing symptoms related to anhedonia, cognition, fatigue, general malaise, motivation, anxiety, negative thinking, pain and appetite. The strategies adopted from the Depression Inventory Development program, as an empirically driven and collaborative process for scale development, have provided the foundation to develop and validate measurement tools in other therapeutic areas as well. Introduction The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD)[1] and Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS)[2] remain the principal clinician-rated measures of depression severity used by clinical researchers and the pharmaceutical industry and accepted by regulatory bodies to demonstrate pivotal proof of efficacy.[3] Nevertheless, despite their widespread use and acceptance, a number of shortcomings have been identified. For example, studies have shown that many HAMD items discriminate poorly across different levels of depression severity, are not sensitive to change following antidepressant treatment and have poor reliability characteristics.[4–8] Another criticism of the HAMD is that vegetative and somatic symptoms disproportionately contribute to total HAMD score[4,9] and several distinct symptoms can be rated by a single items.[9] The MADRS was introduced as an alternative to the HAMD and generally shows measurement properties that are equal to or b...
Source: Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Current Issue Depression Mood Disorders Patient Assessment Psychiatry Review Scales Trial Methodology depressive symptoms item response theory major depressive disorder rating scales Source Type: research