Agreement between a single-item measure of anxiety and depression and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Anxiety and depression can be heightened among individuals living with chronic diseases. Identifying these individuals is necessary for ensuring they are provided with adequate support. Traditional tools such as clinical interviews or symptom checklists are not always feasible to implement in practice. Robust single-item questions may be a useful alternative. This study aimed to measure agreement, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of a single-item question about anxiety and depression compared to the widely used Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). A cross-sectional survey of 2,811 people with cancer attending 19 treatment centres in Australia. Patients were approached in the waiting room prior to an outpatient clinic appointment and invited to complete a pen and paper survey. Participants completed the HADS as well as 2 single-items asking if they have felt anxious or depressed in the last week. The single-items for anxiety and depression each demonstrated moderate levels of sensitivity (0.78 for anxiety; 0.63 for depression) and specificity (0.75 for anxiety; 0.84 for depression) against the relevant HADS subscale. Positive predictive values were moderate (0.53 for anxiety and 0.52 for depression) while negative predictive values were high for both single-item questions (0.90 for anxiety and 0.89 for depression). The single-item measures of anxiety and depression may be useful to rule out individuals who do not require further psychological assessment or intervention for anxiety and depression. Further research is needed to explore whether these findings generalise to other chronic diseases.

Association Between Current Physical Activity and Current Perceived Anxiety and Mood in the Initial Phase of COVID-19 Confinement

“…the participants of this study are younger and higher educated than the average Spanish general population of adults), hence the findings of the present study should be interpreted in the light of this information. Thirdly, the outcome variables were assessed with a not validated tool, which could lead to an information bias; nevertheless, similar single-item questions have been used in prior research to estimate different mental health conditions, and have shown moderate correlation with validated mental health scales ( 45 , 46 ). Due to their brevity, single-item questions have been further recommended to apply in specific contexts of illness and frailty, hence, the authors decided to use it in this specific confinement context due to COVID-19 pandemic ( 47 ).…”

Prevalence and associated factors of depression among Korean adolescents

“…Of the 1,991 students, 271 (13.6%) answered ‘yes’ to a single item asking about feelings of sadness or hopelessness for more than 2 weeks (in last 12 months) that interfered with everyday functioning. Although a diagnosis of depression cannot be based on this single item but must be confirmed through clinical evaluation by a certified psychiatrist, use of this single item might be more suitable for initial detection of recent experiences of depression in a community population [52–55]. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed higher odds of recent depression in adolescents with frequent thoughts of school refusal (odds ratio [95% confidence interval] = 3.25 [2.44–4.32]) and in those who engaged in regular physical exercise (1.57 [1.19–2.07]), whereas a positive mindset (0.65 [0.49–0.86]), perceived school zone safety (0.62 [0.47–0.82]), and perceived social support from one’s mother (0.54 [0.40–0.72]) were associated with lower odds of recent depression.…”

Examining social isolation and loneliness in combination in relation to social support and psychological distress using Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging (CLSA) data

“…We chose the depression item because it had the highest item to total CES-D10 scale correlation (r = .60). Turon and colleagues [72] recently concluded that a single item depression measure may be useful in ruling out the need for further psychological assessment or intervention.…”