Sensitivity and specificity of a two-question screening tool for depression in a specialist palliative care unit

Abstract

The high sensitivity and low false negative rate of the two-question screening tool will aid health professionals in identifying depression in the in-patient specialist palliative care unit. Individuals, who admit to a previous experience of depressive illness, are more likely to respond positively to the two-item questionnaire than those who report no prior history of depressive illness (P = 0.045).

Screening for Depression in Hospitalized Medical Patients

“…Five studies examined instruments that were self-administered by patients [10][11][12][13][14] ; 9 studies assessed instruments administered by nurses, physicians, or research staff members without formal psychiatric training [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] ; and 6 studies evaluated instruments administered by mental health professionals. [24][25][26][27][28][29] Four studies compared different instruments that were administered in the same manner (eg, both self-administered by patients).…”

“…12,[14][15][16][17][18][19]22 In 2 of these studies, instruments were self-administered. In 1 case, a single self-administered item from the STOP-D instrument ("Over the past 2 weeks, how much have you been bothered by feeling sad, down, or uninterested in life?")…”

Evaluación de la depresión en pacientes con cáncer terminal y su aplicación en el contexto mexicano: Una revisión

“…4,13 En dos revisiones recientes, 12,14 se describieron las propiedades psicométricas al evaluar la depresión por medio de una pregunta, dos preguntas o la combinación de éstas con escalas (cuadro 1). 8,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Las evaluaciones que utilizaron una o dos preguntas reportaron datos contradictorios. Así, un estudio reportó 100% de sensibilidad y especificidad para detectar distintos tipos de trastornos depresivos, 17 y tres estudios más reportaron baja sensibilidad para detectar trastornos afectivos menores, pero alta sensibilidad para detectar el trastorno depresivo mayor.…”

Diagnosis of Depression in Patients Receiving Specialist Community Palliative Care: Does Using a Single Screening Question Identify Depression Otherwise Diagnosed by Clinical Interview?

“…Approximately half of patients (47%) approached to take part in the study agreed, which may reflect the fact that our patients were still living at home and may have had conflicting schedules or concerns about having a research team visit them. However, other studies assessing screening tools in palliative care have had similar problems recruiting and this seems to be dependent on a setting with 23% of patients in a specialist palliative care inpatient unit 7 and 70% in a day hospice 6 agreeing to take part. The patients were representative, in terms of age and diagnosis, of those referred to the local community team and to national palliative care services.…”

“…Other studies assessing different questionnaires to identify depression in palliative inpatients or day hospice patients have encountered similar problems with low completion due to patient frailty or refusal to complete the questionnaire. 6,7 Shorter screening tools have been suggested as a means of avoiding the limitations of frailty and length of assessment which impact upon the completion rates of longer questionnaires. 4 The sensitivity and specificity of different screening tools for depression in palliative care range from 0.72 to 1.0, and 0.50 to 1.0, respectively.…”