The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale: Has the Gold Standard Become a Lead Weight?

Bagby, R. Michael; Ryder, Andrew G.; Schuller, Deborah R.; Marshall, Margarita B.

doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.161.12.2163

Cited by 949 publications

(739 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…It has been the gold standard in depression rating scales for 40 years (Bagby, Ryder, Schuller, & Marshall, 2004). It enables the research to be compared to other research.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

EMDR as a treatment for long‐term depression: A feasibility study

2017

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ObjectiveCurrent treatments for long‐term depression – medication and psychotherapy – are effective for some but not all clients. New approaches need to be developed to complement the ones already available. This study was designed to test the feasibility of using an effective post‐traumatic stress disorder treatment for people with long‐term depression.DesignA single‐case experimental design with replications was undertaken as a feasibility study of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in treating long‐term depression.MethodsThirteen people with recurrent and/or long‐term depression were recruited from primary care mental health services and given standard protocol EMDR for a maximum of 20 sessions. Levels of depression were measured before and after treatment and at follow‐up, clients also rated their mood each day.ResultsEight people engaged with the treatment; seven of these had clinically significant and statistically reliable improvement on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Daily mood ratings were highly variable both during baseline and intervention.Conclusions EMDR is a feasible treatment for recurrent and/or long‐term depression. Research on treatment efficacy and effectiveness is now required.Practitioner points EMDR may be an effective treatment for depression. EMDR could be considered if first‐line approaches (CBT and counselling) have been tried and failed. EMDR may be particularly helpful for service users with a history of trauma.

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“…It has been the gold standard in depression rating scales for 40 years (Bagby, Ryder, Schuller, & Marshall, 2004). It enables the research to be compared to other research.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

EMDR as a treatment for long‐term depression: A feasibility study

2017

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“…For the BDI and the HRSD, anything from 1-7 factors have been extracted (cf. Gullion & Rush, 1998), and factor solutions rarely generalize across samples (Bagby, Ryder, Schuller, & Marshall, 2004). For the Center of The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977) and the Montgomery-Åsberg depression rating scale (MADRS; Montgomery & Asberg, 1979), 1-4 factors have been extracted (cf.…”

Section: Unidimensionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring depression over time . . . Or not? Lack of unidimensionality and longitudinal measurement invariance in four common rating scales of depression.

Fried

Borkulo

Epskamp

et al. 2016

Psychological Assessment

246

241

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In depression research, symptoms are routinely assessed via rating scales and added to construct sum-scores. These scores are used as a proxy for depression severity in cross-sectional research, and differences in sum-scores over time are taken to reflect changes in an underlying depression construct. To allow for such interpretations, rating scales must (a) measure a single construct, and (b) measure that construct in the same way across time. These requirements are referred to as unidimensionality and measurement invariance. We investigated these 2 requirements in 2 large prospective studies (combined n = 3,509) in which overall depression levels decrease, examining 4 common depression rating scales (1 self-report, 3 clinician-report) with different time intervals between assessments (between 6 weeks and 2 years). A consistent pattern of results emerged. For all instruments, neither unidimensionality nor measurement invariance appeared remotely tenable. At least 3 factors were required to describe each scale, and the factor structure changed over time. Typically, the structure became less multifactorial as depression severity decreased (without however reaching unidimensionality). The decrease in the sum-scores was accompanied by an increase in the variances of the sum-scores, and increases in internal consistency. These findings challenge the common interpretation of sum-scores and their changes as reflecting 1 underlying construct. The violations of common measurement requirements are sufficiently severe to suggest alternative interpretations of depression sum-scores as formative instead of reflective measures. We discuss the possible causes of these violations such as response shift bias, restriction of range, and regression to the mean.

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“…The most commonly used brief HRSD may be that developed by Bech (Bech et al, 1975) -a 6-item scale that includes the following items: depressed mood, guilt, work and activities, retardation, psychic anxiety, and somatic symptoms general. In fact, the HRSD 6 has been found to be more clearly unidimensional (Bagby et al, 2004;Bech et al, 1992;Bech et al, 1997;Bech et al, 1984;Bech et al, 1975), more sensitive to change than the HRSD 17 (de Montigny et al, 1981;O'Sullivan et al, 1997), and equivalent to (Hooper and Bakish, 2000) or more sensitive to detecting drug/placebo or drug/drug differences than the HRSD 17 (Bech et al, 2000;Faries et al, 2000). This briefer version appears to have less psychometric bias as a result of side effects (Moller, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps the two most popular clinical ratings are the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD), which comes in several versions (e.g., 17, 21, 24, 28, and 31 items) (Hamilton, 1960;Hamilton, 1967) and the 10-item Montgomery Äsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) (Montgomery and Äsberg, 1979). The MADRS is used frequently in European registration and other clinical trials, while the Hamilton continues to be more widely used in the United States, though recent reports (Bagby et al, 2004;Zimmerman et al, 2005) have highlighted significant shortcomings in the HRSD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior analyses of the HRSD 17 have identified specific problematic items in terms of response characteristics (Bagby et al, 2004;Santor and Coyne, 2001). Several briefer versions of the HRSD have been developed to improve upon the HRSD 17 by creating a more unifactorial measure of depression that, consequently, should be more sensitive to detecting changes in depression or to detecting drug/placebo differences than the HRSD 17 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Montgomery Äsberg and the Hamilton ratings of depression: A comparison of measures

Carmody

Rush

Bernstein

et al. 2006

European Neuropsychopharmacology

199

132

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The 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD 17 ) and the Montgomery Äsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) are two widely used clinicianrated symptom scales. A 6-item version of the HRSD (HRSD 6 ) was created by Bech to address the psychometric limitations of the HRSD 17 . The psychometric properties of these measures were compared using classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) methods. IRT methods were used to equate total scores on any two scales. Data from two distinctly different outpatient studies of nonpsychotic major depression: a 12-month study of highly treatment-resistant patients (n=233) and an 8-week acute phase drug treatment trial (n=985) were used for robustness of results.MADRS and HRSD 6 items generally contributed more to the measurement of depression than HRSD 17 items as shown by higher item-total correlations and higher IRT slope parameters. The MADRS and HRSD 6 were unifactorial while the HRSD 17 contained 2 factors. The MADRS showed about twice the precision in estimating depression as either the HRSD 17 or HRSD 6 for average severity of depression. An HRSD 17 of 7 corresponded to an 8 or 9 on the MADRS and 4 on the HRSD 6 .The MADRS would be superior to the HRSD 17 in the conduct of clinical trials.

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The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale: Has the Gold Standard Become a Lead Weight?

Cited by 949 publications

References 82 publications

EMDR as a treatment for long‐term depression: A feasibility study

EMDR as a treatment for long‐term depression: A feasibility study

Measuring depression over time . . . Or not? Lack of unidimensionality and longitudinal measurement invariance in four common rating scales of depression.

The Montgomery Äsberg and the Hamilton ratings of depression: A comparison of measures

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