Adaptação transcultural e validação da Escala de Depressão Geriátrica GDS-15

Abstract

Studies related to the depressive symptomatology and the health of the elderly have gained large dimensions in recent years. The decrease in social relations has contributed to the greater exposure of this age group to depressive symptoms and has caused damages in the mental health of this population, so that the detection of depressive symptoms is relevant for public health. The present study aimed to translate, adapt cross-cultural and obtain psychometric indexes of validity and reproducibility of the GDS-15 scale adapted to the Portuguese language of Brazil. The transcultural translation and adaptation process consisted of five stages (translation of the original version, consensus, back translation, content validation and clarity). The adapted version of the GDS-15 scale was applied to 60 elderly subjects, 30 males and 30 females (69.3 ± 5.1 years), obtaining reliability in the test and retest in the seven-day period and the concurrent validity when compared the results obtained by the Beck Depression Inventory. The adapted GDS-15 presented content validity indexes (CVI) of 94% and clarity (CI) of 99%. The intraclass correlation index (ICC) was 0.83 (95% CI: 0.69-0.91). Correlations were regular for GDS-15 scores compared to those obtained by the Beck Depression Inventory (r = 0.70) and between GDS-15 test and retest (r = 0.66). Bland-Altman plots indicated an underestimation trend in GDS-15 compared to the Beck Inventory. The mean difference between the test and the retest of the adapted version of the adapted GDS-15 scale was 1.1 points and 95% of the scores were between the mean differences (6.4 and -4.1). The mean difference between the adapted GDS-15 and the Beck Depression Inventory was -2.1 points, and 95% of the scores were between the mean of the references (5.5 and -9.8). The score of 6/7 points on the adapted GDS scale showed the best discrimination for the absence and presence of symptoms, respectively, being the sensitivity values (72.73%) and specificity (91.84%). The adapted GDS-15 becomes available for the screening of depressive symptomatology in the Brazilian elderly population, contributing to the progress of future studies conquering important data for public health in the country.