Assessing for depression and mood disturbance in later life

Depression has been identified as a common mental disorder in old age but frequently remains undetected. The Geriatric Depression Scale is one of the most heavily promoted scales for the screening of older people. Short versions of the scale (GDS-15 and GDS-4) are recommended for use with community patients, though most of the validation studies have been with people attending GP surgeries and outpatient departments. Changing the threshold affects the sensitivity and specificity of the scale and it has been recommended that the cut-off points should be lower when the tool is used in clinical practice and higher when used for research purposes.