Assessment for depression among nursing home elders: evaluation of the MDS mood assessment

The 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the GDS Short Form, and the Mood Assessments from the Minimum Data Set versions 1 and 2 were completed for 50 nursing home elders. The purpose of the study was to evaluate agreement among these measures of depression, with the GDS considered the gold standard. Although the GDS Short Form performed highly consistently with the GDS, the correlations of the MDS mood assessments with the GDS were relatively low. The results are discussed in the context of the characteristics that surround the use of the MDS, and recommendations are made for improving methods of detecting depression among nursing home elders.