Regular Research ArticlesThe Geriatric Depression Scale as a Screening Tool for Depression and Suicide Ideation: A Replication and Extention
Section snippets
STUDY OBJECTIVES
The GDS-15 with a threshold of 822 is the major criterion for getting expedite psychiatric services under the Elderly Suicide Prevention Program, a secondary prevention program run by the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong. (Those below the threshold but known to have suicidal thought or recent attempts are also eligible for referral.) Although this threshold was established before for probable clinical depression, it has never been evaluated as an indicator of suicide risk. There is hence an
Sample and Procedure
Participants were 150 Chinese older adults (58.7% women; mean age: 74.1 years, SD: 6.41) consecutively seen for the first time at a geriatric psychiatric outpatient clinic in Hong Kong. For the purpose of obtaining informed consent directly from the patient, only patients with MMSE24 ≥18 were invited. All such individuals provided informed consent to participate, and the study was approved by Kowloon West Cluster Research Ethics Committee of the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong. As typical of
RESULTS
The alpha coefficients were 0.87, 0.76, and 0.76 for GDS-15, GDS-5, and GDS-4, respectively. The GDS-15 and the GDS-5 were highly correlated (r[148] = 0.92, p <0.001, one tailed). Because half of the items were sampled from a different set, the GDS-4 correlated at r[148] = 0.84 with the GDS-15 and 0.81 with the GDS-5 (both p values <0.001, one tailed) only. All except three individuals assessed by clinicians to have suicide ideation also received a depression-related diagnosis, whereas only 33
DISCUSSION
This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to examine the simultaneous performance of GDS measures in identifying depression and suicide ideation as assessed by clinicians. The results showed that the GDS scales were similarly effective, regardless of length, in predicting depressive diagnoses and clinician-rated suicide ideation, suggesting that the general observation about brief depression scales functioning and longer ones in assisting clinical decisions is a robust one.4, 5, 6,
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2018, Journal of Emergency NursingSuicidality-based prediction of suicide attempts in a community-dwelling elderly population: Results from the Osan Mental Health Survey
2015, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :About 18% of elderly people with suicidal ideation have been found not to have any mental disorder in primary care settings (Raue et al., 2010), and more than two-thirds of elderly people with suicidal ideation in community settings do not meet the criteria of any mental disorder (Corna et al., 2010). In many previous studies, suicidality has been evaluated using a part or an item from an instrument for evaluating specific mental disorders like depressive disorder (Cheng et al., 2010; Sirey et al., 2008). Second, the MINI-SM is simple and easy to administer in either primary care or community settings (de Azevedo Marques and Zuardi, 2008).
Suicide in the old elderly: Results from one italian county
2014, American Journal of Geriatric PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :These conditions may push the individual to feel hopeless and consider suicide as a way—despite being maladaptive—of coping with their psychache. When assessing psychopathology and suicide ideation in the elderly, it is important for the clinicians to use sound psychometric instruments, with extensive research supporting their validity in the geriatric population, such as the Geriatric Depression Scale,31–33 the Geriatric Suicide Ideation Scale,34 and the Beck Hopelessness Scale.35 Furthermore, it is also necessary to explore resiliency factors such as reasons for living.36