Beck Depression Inventory Notes PDF

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Beck Depression Inventory notes...

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Background info Purpose of the test Method of construction Reliability Validity Limitations Strengths

Background Information  Created by aaron T. Beck in 1961  Pioneer in Cognitive Therapy  Interested in measuring depressive symptoms o He has inspired many in cognitive behaviour o President of the meritus o He is 94 Purpose of the BDI  Measures the presence and severity of depressive symptoms  Cognitive distortions that underlie depression  Not meant to be a diagnostic tool  Can be used as a first tier assessment tool  Monitors changes  Used in a wide variety of populations o It is a first tier assessment tool (maybe the first of many batteries of tests) o Originally just used for adult clinical populations o Now it’s used for adolescence, older people, the deaf population… o Been used on college students Method of Administration  Beck is only 21 questions  Was originally designed as an interview-restricted test  Is now a self-report  Both scales are up there: the first scale is used for those who are not currently depressed o 1-10 considered normal ups and downs o 11-16 mild mood disturbance o etc. o over 40 extreme depression  on the second scale, even a score of 13= minimal depression BDI-II Sample  Items 1-13 assess the psychological symptoms of depression  Item 5  feelings of guilt  1 would be, I feel guilty part of the time  3 would be, I feel guilty all of the time

 it’s pretty subjective for people to fill out Revisions BDI-IA, 1978: self-administration BDI-II, 1996: more cohesive to DSM-IV BDI-SF: Short Form for quick screen medical patients BDI-PC/BDI-FS: Primary Care/Fast Sheet for quick screen of medical inpatients Construction Questions asked to measure items including:  feelings of guilt  sadness  pessimism  past failure  loss of pleasure  punishment fears  self-dislike New questions on BDI-II measure items include (more of a focus on the physical items of depression):  agitation Reliability of the BDI  High reliability  Standardization  Gender, race, ethnicity o One study found..  Test-retest (r = .93 to .59) o One study found… o A meta-analysis found… this indicates, the longer the time interval, the more variance it is, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s meant to track mood changes  The longer the time interval, the less reliable  Internal consistency (r = .84) o A meta-analysis found the internal consistency was high  Restricting the range o The reliability scores, o This study suggested that it’s perhaps because of the range restriction Validity of the BDI Face Validity: appears valid  Convergent Validity: relates well with other measures of depression  Content Validity: BDI-II improved  Construct Validity: relates high to other constructs found in depressed patients o Including stress, loneliness, anxiety, alcoholism, sleep patterns, and suicidal behaviours  Factor Analysis: depressive symptoms divided into three parts

o Supports the validity of the BDI, because depression can be looked at as one syndrome divided into three parts which are, .. the body or somatic differences, etc.. Strengths  Quick and painless  Effective tool for assessment  Can help confirm or deny depression  Easy for professionals to assess their patients’ progress  Cognitive items can track improvement o You can see an improvement with cognitive behavioural therapy o The goal of CBT is to help a person learn to recognize negative patterns of thought o If somebody is partaking in this therapy, and throughout they are taking the BDI, hopefully they will see improvements  A great supplemental tool Limitations  Individuals can minimize or exaggerate their responses  Only an assessment tool, not a diagnostic one  Minorities need to be represented in studies  Physical symptoms could create false positives . even when the goal of the study was to examine ethnicities and minorities, mostly it was studying white people. . what about people with something like ALS?

Future Challenges  Beck has created several other scales that measure including a measure for suicide, hopelessness, and anxiety  More scales could be created to measure PTSD, bipolar disorder … etc....