ABSTRACT
Objective:To assess the validity and reliability of the depression and somatic symptoms scale among patients with coronary heart disease.Methods:Totally 246 patients with coronary heart disease were assessed with depression and somatic symptoms scale (DSSS), Hamilton depression rating scale for depression (HAMD) and patients’ health questionnaire depression scale-9 item (PHQ-9). The structural validity was evaluated with exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The validity as a screening tool was evaluated with the gold standard diagnosed by psychiatrists who were trained with the mini international neuropsychological interview (MINI) according to ICD-10. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to identify cutoff scores for depression. Cronbach α coefficient was used to evaluate the internal consistency.Results:Exploratory factor analysis yielded two factors: depression factor and somatic factor, and the cumulative variance was 51.8%. The fitting indexes of confirmatory factor analysis were as follows: χ2/ df=3.636, RMR=0.077, RMSEA=0.104, IFI=0.804, TLI=0.781, CFI=0.802. The intraclass correlation coefficient of DSSS and HAMD was 0.54. The area under ROC curve (AUC) was 0.828, and the best boundary value was 17 points (sensitivity and specificity: 81% and 75%, respectively). The total scores and subscale scores for internal consistency of DSSS were higher in the depression group than those in the non-depression group ( P<0.01). Cronbach α coefficient for internal consistency of DSSS was 0.917. Conclusion:The DSSS has good validity and reliability among patients with coronary heart disease for screening depression, and can be used to screen depression among patients with coronary heart disease in general hospital.