DIFFERENTIATING MAJOR DEPRESSION AND PANIC DISORDERS BY SELF-REPORT AND CLINICAL RATING-SCALES - ROC ANALYSIS AND INFORMATION-THEORY

The revised Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Cog nition Checklist Depression and Anxiety subscales, revised Hamilton Ps ychiatric Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD-R), and the revised Hamilt on Anxiety Rating Scale were administered to 92 outpatients diagnosed only with major depression disorders and 50 outpatients diagnosed only with panic disorders. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analy sis was used to evaluate each instrument's ability to discriminate the two diagnostic groups. The optimum cut-off score for each scale was d etermined as a function of prevalence by maximizing information gain. The results indicated that the depression scales were better than the anxiety scales in discriminating the two groups. The HRSD-R was superi or to the other depression scales, whereas all the anxiety scales disp layed similar discriminating power.