Abstract

Comparative validity of inventories and checklists for identifying depressed patients with hidden bipolarity

Author(s): Per Bech, Rikke Engell,Stine Bjerrum Maller

Current diagnostic criteria favor overdiagnosis of major depression disorder, and evidence suggests that bipolarity is underdiagnosed in depressed samples. In this review, we focus on the comparative validity of questionnaires to identify depressed patients at risk for bipolar disorder. The review focuses on clinical validity as expressed by experienced psychiatrists as opposed to focusing on the psychometric validity of the individual items in a questionnaire. Compared with the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ), the Hypomania Checklistâ�?�?�?�?32 (HCL- 32) has been the subject of many more psychometric analyses. It is unfortunate that the classical methods (factor analysis and Cronbach’s coefficient a) have been used to evaluate the psychometric validity of the HCLâ�?�?�?�?32, because they favor scales with many items. In this review, we found no differences in the two measures regarding their clinical validity.