Avaliação da escala de depressão geriátrica e do Inventário de Depressão de Beck como instrumentos de caracterização da sintomatologia depressiva em longevos

Abstract

Oldest-old (80 years or more) have different profile them those aged 60 to 79, due to their larger decline in functionality, with involvement of disease, loss of social status, among others. As a result, there is a greater possibility to present mental disorders, the most common is depression. The objective of this project is to verify the effectiveness of two screening tools for the characterization of depression in the oldest-old. This is a quantitative, cross-sectional, observational, and analytical study. The sample size was 74 oldest-old, residents of the city Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. After asking the identification and sociodemographic data the oldest-old answer the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) to identify those depressed or not. Later, they responded the Geriatric Depression Scale 15 (GDS-15) and the Inventory Beck Depression II (BDI-II). From the diagnosis of MINI we calculated the sensitivity and specificity of the BDI-II and GDS-15 for different cutoff points, generating two ROC curves (Receiver Operating Characteristics). GDS-15 showed 100% sensitivity and 83% specificity, being the best cutoff point 6. The BDI-II obtained 100% sensitivity and 87% specificity, with cutoff point 15 indicated for this population. The BDI-II was more accurate than the GDS-15, although the last one presented more appropriated for epidemiologic studies. The two tools were effective for the screening of depressive symptomatology in Oldes- old.