Psychiatric morbidity and its screening in Turkish women with breast cancer: a comparison between the HADS and SCID tests

Objective: Adjustment disorders (ADs) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are often the most prevalent psychiatric disorders among cancer patients. This study's objective was to determine the overall performance of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) as a screening instrument in identifying cases of psychiatric morbidity such as ADs and MDD. Methods: Two hundred and four consecutive patients completed a questionnaire including a demographic and clinical data form, HADS, and were examined with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV (SCID). The screening performance of HADS was investigated by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUC), rates of specificity, and sensitivity. Results: For MDD; the AUC was 0.77 on the HADS total, the AUC was 0.79 on the HADS depression subscale, and was 0.72 on the anxiety subscale. For ADs; the results were 0.74, 0.74, and 0.70 respectively. Findings indicated that a HADS total cut‐off score of ?17 to be optimal in identifying cases of MDD. This cut‐off score offered a sensitivity of 0.70 and a specificity of 0.80. Findings suggested that a HADS total cut‐off score of 10 was the optimal combination of sensitivity (0.84) and specificity (0.55) for ADs. When compared with SCID, the percentage of cases identified by HADS was 28% for MDD and 22% for ADs. Conclusions: Compared with SCID, HADS was found to have acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity in detecting psychiatric morbidity especially for MDD and HADS can be recommended with reservations as a screening tool for breast cancer patients. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.