Roy S. Clemmons

THE BECK DEPRESSION INVENTORY WITH MEDICAL INPATIENTS

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this investigation is to report the use of the Beck Depression Inventory, Beck (1961), in a general medical inpatient population. This study is one segment of a comprehensive evaluation of depression in medical patients. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used because it was clinically derived. In reporting its validity and reliability with psychiatric patients, Beck indicated that it should have value in research on depression. Although the BDI was designed to measure depression in psychiatric patients, the possibility of extending its use to the area of general medicine is appealing. Diagnosing depression in medical patients depends too much on clinicians’ subjective evaluations. The need for objective criteria is critical. In addition, the use of the instrument with different types of subjects refines its applicability. MATERIAL The BDI was developed to provide an objective instrument for assessing depression in patients by measuring their behavioral manifestations of depression. Beck and his colleagues were concerned with identifying and objectively quantifying depression, rather than distinguishing among various types of depression or diagnostic categories. The inventory contains twenty-one symptom attitude categories (see Table 6). For each, there are four to five statements of inoreasing severity. The patient reads the scale and chooses the statement which he feels is most applicable to himself at that particular time. The score on each item may range from 0-3 depending on the severity; the total score falls between 0 and 62. Cutting scores were estabIished by Beck (1963), and wiIl be presented in the section on results.