Effectiveness of Beck Depression Inventory-II subscales in screening for major depressive disorders in adolescent psychiatric inpatients

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) was administered to 45 male and 55 female psychiatric inpatients who were 12 to 17 years old, and the Mood Module from the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD) was used to determine whether these patients met criteria for a diagnosis of a DSM-IV major depressive disorder (MDD). Binormal receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) analyses found that BDI-II total scores, Cognitive subscale scores, Noncognitive subscale scores, and embedded BDI FastScreen for Medical Patients subscale scores were comparably effective in differentiating inpatients who were and were not diagnosed with a MDD; the areas under the ROC curves were, respectively, .92 (95% confidence interval CI]: .85-.96), .90 (95% CI: .82-.95), .90 (95% CI: .83-.95), and .90 (95% CI: .83-.95).