Psychometric properties of the cardiac depression scale in patients with coronary heart disease

A total of 152 patients were diagnosed with coronary heart disease and were administered the CDS along with the Beck Depression Inventory- 2 (BDI-2) and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) 3.5-months after cardiac hospitalization.The CDS’s factorial composition in the current sample was similar to that observed in the original scale. Varimax-rotated principal-components analyses extracted six factors, corresponding to mood, anhedonia, cognition, fear, sleep and suicide. Reliability analyses yielded internal consistency α - coefficients for the six subscales ranging from 0.62 to 0.82. The CDS showed strong concurrent validity with the BDI-II (r？=？0.64). More patients were classified as severely depressed using the CDS. Both the CDS and the BDI-2 displayed significantly strong correlations with the STAI (r？=？0.61 and r？=？0.64), respectively.These findings encourage the use of the CDS for measuring the range of depressive symptoms in those with CHD 3.5 months after cardiac hospitalization.A high incidence of depression has been reported in those with coronary heart disease (CHD) specifically in those who have had coronary artery bypass graft surgery [1-3], those who have experienced myocardial infarction [2,4] and following angina [5,6]. One in every four people with CHD have been reported to meet diagnostic criteria for major depression [7-11]. Mild depression is also commonly found in those hospitalised with CHD and has been estimated to affect from one in four [9,11] to one in three of these individuals [12]. Depression has been found to affect the prognosis of patients with CHD even though some of these patients may not always meet the DSM-IV criteria for major depression [13]. Those with CHD who are more likely to experience mild to moderate depression, (based on a BDI score of 10 or more), have been found to have a subsequent mortality compared with patients with BDI scores less than 10 when assessed at 6 and 18 months following the event [14-16]. Similar fi