Development of a depression scale for veterans and war widows

We developed and evaluated a brief measure of depression for use within a p opulation of older Australian war veterans and war widows. Derived from the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the 12-item GDS-Veterans is designed to include items that most closely represent the thoughts and feelings of olde r veterans in relation to their war experiences. The scale was administered to 1,620 veterans and widows concurrent with the 36-item Medical Outcomes Study Short Form (MOS SF-36) quality of life measure. Of those surveyed, 13 .5% indicated that they often or always worry about things that happened du ring the war, indicating that this item tapped an important dimension for m any of the veteran population. Scores on the GDS-Veterans were strongly cor related with the Mental Health subscale (-.72) and the Mental Health Compon ent Summary Score (-.68) of the MOS SF-36 quality of life measure.