Abstract
BackgroundDepression 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.MethodsThis 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.ResultsWe 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.ConclusionThe 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.
Highlights
Depression and anxiety are prevalent psychiatric comorbidities that are known to have a negative impact on a patient’s general prognosis
The present study aimed to identify the existence of prevalent psychiatric comorbidities and to evaluate the sensitivity of the Arabic version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in a hospital A&E department setting in Saudi Arabia
That factor was loaded with all six items of the anxiety subscale, but the seventh item (“I can sit at ease and feel relaxed,” which had a factor loading of 0.629) was loaded with the second factor on the depression subscale
Summary
Depression and anxiety are prevalent psychiatric comorbidities that are known to have a negative impact on a patient’s general prognosis. Many studies worldwide have consistently found low detection rates of such psychiatric comorbidities by attending physicians, thereby resulting in delays in appropriate diagnoses and treatment [9,10,11] These delays probably make a substantial contribution to the burden of illness and to the add-on economic impacts of resulting disabilities—for the patient as well as for the health care system and society in general. Scores of 11 or more with either subscale are considered to indicate a significant “case” of psychiatric comorbidity; scores of 8–10 signify the presence of a “disorder.” A score of 7 or less is considered normal [13, 14] Since its inception, this instrument has been used extensively worldwide, and it has been translated into many languages, including German, Swedish, Chinese, French, Dutch, Portuguese [15], Farsi (Persian) [16], and Arabic
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