The Reliability and Validity of Post Stroke Depression Scale in Different Type of Post Stroke Depression Patients

Objective: A self-rating post stroke depression scale (PSDS) showed a good reliability and validity to assess severity of depressive symptoms among stroke patients. This study aimed to retest the psychometric properties of PSDS in different types of post-stroke depression (PSD). Materials and methods: A total of 170 stroke patients were recruited in the study. 82 and 25 patients were respectively diagnosed as PSD symptoms disorder (PSDSD) and PSD disorder (PSDD) patients according to their respective diagnostic criteria. The PSDS and the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were used to assess the severity of depression. Cronbach alpha, Spear-man rank coefficient and independent sample t-test were conducted to examine reliability, internal consistency and discriminate validity. Then the receiver operating characteristic curve and Youden index were used to performance evaluation and cut-off value respectively in different subtypes of PSD patients. Results: The Cronbach alpha of PSDS was 0.857, indicting a good reliability. The Spearman correlation coefficient between PSDS and PHQ-9 was 0.942 (P<0.001). The discriminate validity displayed significant difference between PSDSD as well as PSDD and no depression patients (all P <0.001). 5/24 and 10/24 were the cut-off value for PSDSD and PSDD patients. Conclusions: PSDS is a useful screen tool with an acceptable psychometric properties for estimation of different subtypes of PSD patients.

Automated summary

The self-rating post stroke depression scale (PSDS) demonstrated good reliability and validity in assessing depressive symptoms among stroke patients. The study retested the psychometric properties of PSDS in different types of post-stroke depression (PSD) and found it to be a useful screening tool with acceptable properties for estimating different subtypes of PSD patients.