The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Essay Sample)

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The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale
It is a self-assessment test that is used by doctors to determine the levels of anxiety and depression a patient is experiencing. They are used in medical outpatient clinics and use a 10 point scale in which the score a patient has determines their clinical stability. If a patient scores the lowest score value of 1 they are recommended for clinical psychiatric treatment, if they score the maximum score value of 10 they are considered clinically stable.
The scores are determined by a series of questions asked by a clinician. Some of the questions will be geared towards anxiety while others depression. The patient is required to answer the questions with immediate reactions to give a more accurate picture of their feelings than when they would have taken long to think of their responses.
Initially when it was introduced in the year 1982 by Dr. Alexi at the John Hopkins Hospital for clinical trials, it was used to help determine the effects of high stress situations on patients. The results made it widely used as an assessment tool in hospitals and psychiatric clinics, with time it underwent minor changes in its scoring system and questions but it has generally maintained its original format.
Several reviews of the HADS method have been done and they generally concluded that HADs is a good instrument for psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, intercorrelation, homogeneity and internal consistency.
It was also found to have internally reliable and had good test-retest reliability when it was used in an end-stage renal disease, ( HYPERLINK "/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WCH-46T3655-5&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2002&_rdoc=1&_fmt=full&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_cdi=6739&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8adc2b7c41f2519375a1830278e09865&searchtype=a" \l "bib7" Martin & Thompson 1999) population. HADS offered a good potential as a screening tool due to its ease in administration and patient acceptability.
The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were also administered in a Greek version where The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were used as 'gold standards' for depression and anxiety respectively. The HADS showed both high internal consistency and high concurrent validity. This meant that the Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.884 and stability and the correlations of the scale and its subscales with the BDI and the STAI were high.
From the data that has been provided it would be valid but not practical. This is because of the type of questions used, basic problems that the population in which I live in experience and the size of the population itself. Another factor would be the wide gap of standard of living within...