Psychology Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2010
Journal
The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science
Volume
197
Issue
1
First Page
61
Last Page
66
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.109.076596
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Depression measures that include somatic symptoms may inflate severity estimates among medically ill patients, including those with cardiovascular disease.
AIMS: To evaluate whether people receiving in-patient treatment following acute myocardial infarction (AMI) had higher somatic symptom scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) than a non-medically ill control group matched on cognitive/affective scores.
METHOD: Somatic scores on the BDI-II were compared between 209 patients admitted to hospital following an AMI and 209 psychiatry out-patients matched on gender, age and cognitive/affective scores, and between 366 post-AMI patients and 366 undergraduate students matched on gender and cognitive/affective scores.
RESULTS: Somatic symptoms accounted for 44.1% of total BDI-II score for the 209 post-AMI and psychiatry out-patient groups, 52.7% for the 366 post-AMI patients and 46.4% for the students. Post-AMI patients had somatic scores on average 1.1 points higher than the students (P
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings contradict assertions that self-report depressive symptom measures inflate severity scores in post-AMI patients. However, the preponderance of somatic symptoms at low score levels across groups suggests that BDI-II scores may include a small amount of somatic symptom variance not necessarily related to depression in post-AMI and non-medically ill respondents.
