Screening for Depression among Community-dwelling Elders: Usefulness of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.

CONTEXT: Though common, depressive disorders often remain undetected in late life.

AIM: To examine the usefulness of Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) for identifying depression among older people.

SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Community resident older people (aged 65 years or more), were evaluated by clinicians trained in psychiatry, as part of a cross-sectional study of late-life depression. Assessments were done in the community.

METHODS AND MATERIAL: The participants were assigned ICD-10 diagnoses and assessed using Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and CES-D. A short version of CES-D with 10 items, translated to the local language Malayalam, was used.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The sensitivity and specificity of CES-D was evaluated against ICD-10 clinical diagnosis of depression. The correlation of CES-D and MADRS was assessed using Pearson correlation coefficient.

RESULTS: 220 consenting adults from 3 wards of the Panchayath were assessed. On analysis of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve of CES-D scores in relation to clinical diagnosis, the large Area Under Curve (AUC) showed efficient screening and a cut off score of 4 in CES-D had a sensitivity of 97.7% and a specificity of 79.1% for depression. There was also good correlation between the MADRS and CES-D scores (0.838).

CONCLUSION: CES-D is a short simple scale which can be used by health care professionals for detecting depression in older people in primary care settings.