Detection of depressive symptomatology in elderly people: A short version of the CES-D scale

This study aims to test a short form of the Center for Epidemiological Stud ies-Depression Scale (CES-D) which can be a useful screening tool for depre ssive symptomatology in epidemiological studies of elderly patients. The st udy was con ducted on 2792 subjects from the PAQUID (Personnes Agees QUID?) cohort, an epidemiological survey of community dwellers living in South-We st France. CES-D items with high sensitivity and good specificity were sele cted for the short form, then the best cut-off scores were determined with Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves. The external validity of t he 5-item scale was then assessed against the full scale at different PAQUI D follow-ups. Sensitivity was 99% and specificity 81% for detecting depress ive symptomatology when compared to the 20-item scale. The external validit y on the different follow-ups was good, yielding a sensitivity varying from 95 to 100%, and a specificity from 83 to 89%. In conclusion, the 5-item CE S-D is a simple, rapid and reliable tool which could be useful for screenin g depressive symptoms in epidemiological studies of the elderly. (C) 2000, Editrice Kurtis.