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What Is the Beck Scale for Depression?

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a 21 item questionnaire developed by psychologist Aaron Beck that is widely used as a screening instrument for the assessment of depression.

  1. Development

    • The development of the BDI was influenced by Aaron Beck's cognitive theory of depression. There is a greater emphasis on cognitive beliefs about the world, the future and the self than there is in the diagnostic criteria of depression as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association.

    Test Content

    • The BDI has 21 questions that measure varied symptoms of depression such as sadness, pessimism, self-criticalness, agitation, guilt, irritability, loss of appetite, changes in appetite, fatigue, change in sleep patterns, and loss of interest in sex. Each question has four answer choices that indicate increasing level of symptom intensity.

    Content Structure

    • Factor analysis of the items of the BDI clusters the items into three content areas: bodily disturbance, negative attitudes toward the self and performance impairment.

    Scoring

    • Question responses are assigned a value ranging from 0 to 3 based on the severity of the symptom. Question scores are added to arrive at a total test score. Scores of 0 to 9 indicate no depression; 10 to 18 indicate mild to moderate depression; 19 to 29 indicate moderate to severe depression and 30 to 63 indicate severe depression.

    Validity

    • The BDI is widely used in research, and its psychometric properties are well established. It is highly associated with clinical judgments of depression and with other measures of depression.

    Limits

    • Though highly correlated with clinical ratings, the BDI is considered to be a screening instrument and should be used as an adjunct to clinical judgment to diagnose depression.

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