Beck Depression Inventory was devised by Aaron T. Beck, a leader in cognitive therapy. With regards to the overall measurement of the intensity as well as the severity of restlessness, including the unfathomed depth of the depression, there is no better technique for measuring depression than the Beck Depression Inventory. The Beck Depression Inventory is made up of twenty-one questions, which are centered on the overall assessment of a symptom. This symptom is common in all depressed patients. This happens to be the long-form. There is another form, called the short form. The short form contains seven questions. They are used by the primary care providers for administration.
The main purpose of the BDI program was to monitor a mentally ill patient during a routine mental health care setting. Thereafter, it was the duty of the mental health expert to first access and then monitor, the general depressive tendencies in a mental patient. The Beck Depression Inventory is an important part of the ongoing medical examinations and the entire process takes five to ten minutes to complete. While administering the BDI process, you need to ensure that you do so through the aid of a trained medical representative only. Health professionals, who are trained in its usage and interpretations, are supposed to conduct a BDI cession and no one else. (Beck, Steer).
The Beck Depression Inventory was devised in the year 1961, after which, it finally got an adaptation in the year 1969. It was in the year 1979 that it was finally patented and put to practice on a larger scale. BDS-II was developed a few years later to showcase the revisions in the Fourth Edition Text Revisions. The manual was Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While discussing the contents of this manual, you need to first understand the contents of the long-form.
As we have already discussed, it contains twenty-one questions. Each question contains four possible answers and the end-user simply needs to check on one of the four boxes which are provided in front of each question. Over here, the severity of the symptom, which primarily refers to depression, is gauged on a scale of one to three. Likewise, by the BDI-PC, a version devised by the primary care providers, there are seven questions in all. Each question is a reported item that is symbolic of the patient’s major depressive disorder. This in turn has been measured over two weeks before the test. (Beck, Steer).
The BDI tests are scored differently for the general population and different for those who have been diagnosed with prior clinical depression. With regards to the general population, a score of twenty-one and above implies that the individual is indeed depressed. On the other hand, for those who are clinically depressed, there are four kinds of scoring patterns. The first score is from 0 to 9. This implies that the individual is suffering from minimal depressive disorders. The second scoring pattern is from 10 to 16, which in turn implies that the individual is mildly depressed. The third scoring pattern of 17 to 29, states that the individual is suffering from moderate depression. Severe depression is recorded when an individual scores anywhere from 30 to 63, in the BDI test module (Beck, Steer).
With special regards to content validity, construct validity, and concurrent validity, Beck Depression Inventory has emerged as a true winner in all respects.
The validity of BDI has also been advocated by Factor Analysis. Following the final results of BDI, depression is composed of three symptoms, namely, negative attitude, inability to perform normal functions, and finally, bodily disturbances.
References
Beck, A., Steer. “Internal consistencies of the original and revised Beck Depression Inventory.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 40 (1984): 1365-1367.