RESUMO
The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) is an inventory used to detect bipolar disorder type II (BD II) and it has been validated in several countries, other than Venezuela. For this reason, the authors tried to determine the criterion validity of the Venezuelan version of the MDQ in Venezuelan patients. The study was carried out in two stages at the Psychiatric Department of the Hospital Vargas of Caracas, Venezuela, which is a general teaching hospital. A group of 199 adult outpatients, who had been previously diagnosed as suffering from major depression disorder--single episode or recurrent--were evaluated. Initially, they were diagnosed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV for Axis I Disorders (SCID-I). Afterwards, they were asked to answer the MDQ using a cut-off point > or = 7/13. The protocol was approved by the institutional review board of the Hospital Vargas of Caracas. A total of 78.4% of the subjects were female. The mean age was 43.60 years for males (SD = 14.19) and 43.94 years for females (SD = 12.06). The frequency of false unipolar patients was 28.1% (23.6% bipolar disorder type I and 4.5% BD II). While comparing the results of the SCID-I and the MDQ, a sensibility of 100.0% (95% CI: 0.66-1.00) and a specificity of 61.1% (95% CI: 0.53-0.68) were found for the diagnosis of BD II. According to our results, the MDQ with a cut-off point > or = 7/13 is a valid instrument to detect the bipolar disorder type II in Venezuelan depressed outpatients.
