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Updated: Jun 10, 2026
A Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion Technique for Inducing Post-stroke Depression in Rats
Published on: May 22, 2019
Preliminary evidence for the development of a stroke specific geriatric depression scale
Julie S Cinamon1, Lois Finch, Sydney Miller
1Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Unlabelled:
Measuring depression among persons with stroke faces many challenges; diagnostic tools are lengthy and do not measure the extent of depression; screening tools are not stroke-specific; and metrics from the available indices do not provide a value that is mathematically or clinically meaningful.
Purpose:
To provide evidence for the development of a stroke specific Geriatric Depression Scale screening measure (SS-GDS) through Rasch methodology.
Methods:
Secondary analyses of a randomized controlled trial post-stroke. Interviews from 91 subjects aged 71 (SD 10) over three time points or 240 interviews were analyzed. Rasch Analysis helped transform the 30-item GDS onto a logit scale. Unidimensionality, item fit, redundancy, and differential item functioning (DIF) were assessed.
Results:
Seventeen items fit the model to form a hierarchical measure ranging in difficulty from +1.2 to -1.8 logits. Preliminary psychometric properties of reliability, validity, and responsiveness were adequate. Two items that demonstrated DIF, one for language and one for gender, were split.
Conclusion:
The 17-item SS-GDS Rasch measure was developed to screen for post-stroke depression (PSD) and provide an important step toward quantifying PSD. If revalidated in a larger sample, the SS-GDS could provide a mathematically valid index to screen for depression in stroke survivors.
