• Guilherme Nogueira de Oliveira, João Marcelo K Lessa, Ana Paula Gonçalves, Eduardo Jardel Portela, Josemir W Sander, and Antonio Lucio Teixeira.
• Neuropsychiatric Unit, Neurology Division, University Hospital, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Epilepsy Treatment Advanced Centre (NATE), Felicio Rocho Hospital, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• Epilepsy Behav. 2014 May 1; 34: 50-4.

PurposeWe aimed to assess and compare the psychometric properties of the Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy (NDDI-E), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale Depression Subscale (HADS-D), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) as screening instruments for depression and suicidality in people with epilepsy.MethodsOne hundred twenty-six people (54% women) diagnosed with epilepsy were recruited and evaluated on their sociodemographic and clinical features. Depression and suicide risk were assessed with a structured psychiatric interview, the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI-Plus), and the performance of NDDI-E, HADS-D, and BDI was evaluated.ResultsThe sensitivity and specificity of BDI for the diagnosis of depression was around 90%; HADS-D and NDDI-E have sensitivity higher than 80%, and specificity was greater than 75%. For identifying suicide risk, the NDDI-E sensitivity was 92.9%, and HADS-D sensitivity was 85.7%, and a reasonable specificity (68%) was observed for both instruments. All instruments showed a negative predictive value of over 90%. Comparisons of the areas under the ROC curve for these instruments were not significantly different regarding depression or moderate/severe risk of suicide.ConclusionAll three instruments evaluated have clinical utility in the screening of depression in people with epilepsy. Both NDDI-E and HADS-D are brief efficient screening instruments to identify depression in people with epilepsy. The BDI is a more robust instrument, but it takes longer to apply, which hampers its use by busy clinicians and by people with cognitive impairment.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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