Montgomery-Asberg depression rating scale in clinical practice: Psychometric properties on Serbian patients

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze the measurement properties of the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) Serbian version for quantifying depression severity in the clinical setting. Methods: Two studies have been conducted in order to validate MADRS. The first study had sixty-four adult patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), with test-retest situation, and the second one had 19 participants (also with MDD), who had six test-retest situations. Psychometric evaluation included descriptive analysis, internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity (correlations with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-HAMD-17). Results: The internal consistency for test-retest reliability was 0.93 in total for MADRS, and for six testretest situations was 0.95. MADRS has one factor structure, with explained variance of 66.26% for the first testing, and 61.29% for the retest. There are statistical significant correlations between MADRS and HAMD-17 (r=0.96 for test and r=0.94 for retest). Also, it has been shown great correlation between all items on MADRS, and for instrument in total (r=.89). Conclusion: MADRS has shown good statistical results, and it could be used in everyday clinical practice for discriminating MDD.