Screening post-stroke depression in Chinese older adults using the hospital anxiety and depression scale

Little is known about the performance of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in screening post-stroke depression (PSD) in Chinese older adult patients. One hundred Chinese geriatric patients with first-ever stroke, consecutively admitted to a rehabilitation facility, were assessed by occupational therapists using the depression subscale of the HADS. Psychiatric diagnoses, which served as the benchmark for judging the usefulness of HADS in screening PSD, were made using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-DSM-III-R) supplemented by all available clinical information. The optimal cut-off point of HADS was 6/7. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of the HADS, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, were 88%, 53%, 0.28, 0.96 and 0.75, respectively. The HADS does not appear to be a useful tool in screening for PSD in Chinese older adults.