Validity and accuracy of the Whooley questions to identify maternal distress in Dutch pregnant women

The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice, Ahead of Print. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the validity and accuracy of the Whooley questions for routine screening of maternal distress in Dutch antenatal care. Design/methodology/approach In this cohort design, the authors evaluated self-reported responses to the Whooley questions against the Edinburgh Depression Scale screening for antenatal depression, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for general anxiety and the pregnancy-related anxiety questionnaire-revised screening for pregnancy-related anxiety, among Dutch pregnant women during the first and third trimester of pregnancy. The authors used standard diagnostic performance measures for the two case-finding items. Findings The Whooley items in this study showed a higher specificity than sensitivity. The Whooley results showed good evidence to identify women who are depressed or (trait)anxious in both trimesters of pregnancy, but the results showed weak to moderate evidence to identify pregnancy-related anxiety. The Whooley items had a low to moderate predictive ability for depression, trait-anxiety and pregnancy-related anxiety and a good ability for negative case-finding. The Whooley items proved to be more able to report how effective the case-finding questions are in identifying women without depression, trait-anxiety and pregnancy-related anxiety (ruling out) rather than how effective these are in identifying women with depression,...
Source: The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research