Reliability and validity of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale in an emergency department in Saudi Arabia : a cross sectional observational study
, Zohair A. Al Aseri1*, M. Owais Suriya, Hosam A. Hassan, Mujtaba Hasan, Shaffi Ahmed Sheikh, Adel Al Tamimi, Mashhoor Alshathri and Najeeb Khalid . 2015
Background
Depression and anxiety are prevalent psychiatric comorbidities that are known to have a negative impact on a patient’s general prognosis. But screening for these potential comorbidities in a hospital’s accident and emergency department has seldom been undertaken, particularly in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) has been extensively used to evaluate these psychiatric comorbidities in various clinical settings at all levels of health care services except for the accident and emergency department. This study therefore aimed to assess the reliability and validity of the HADS for anxiety and depression among patients at a hospital accident and emergency department in Saudi Arabia.
Methods
This cross-sectional observational study was conducted from January to December 2012. The participants were 257 adult patients (aged 16 years and above) who presented at the accident and emergency department of King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who met our inclusion criteria. We used an Arabic translation of the HADS. We employed factor analysis to determine the underlying factor structure of that instrument in assessing reliability and validity.
Results
We found the Arabic version of the HADS to be acceptable for 95 % of the subjects. We used Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to evaluate reliability, and it indicated a significant correlation with both the anxiety (0.73) and depression (0.77) subscales of the HADS, thereby supporting the validity of the instrument. By means of factor analysis, we obtained a two-factor solution according to the two HADS subscales (anxiety and depression), and we observed a statistically significant correlation (r = 0.57; p < 0.0001) between the two subscales.
Conclusion
The HADS can be used effectively in an accident and emergency department as an initial screening instrument for anxiety and depression. It thus has great potential as part of integrated multidisciplinary care.
IMPORTANCE HelmetnoninvasiveventilationhasbeenusedinpatientswithCOVID-19withthe premise that helmet interface is more effective than mask interface in delivering prolonged treatments with high…
Abstract
Objectives
This article describes the prevalence and epidemiological trends of COVID-19 mortality in the largest registry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Objectives. The objective of this study is to prospectively analyze emergency physicians’ (EP’s) abilities to interpret noncontrast computed tomography (NCCT) brain images in a blinded fashion and…