Background: Depression is an important symptom for many palliative care patients but is rarely identified. It's known to reduce quality of life and impact on palliation of physical symptom. These physical symptoms can be improved by an adequate treatment of depression. Many depressed cancer patients are not treated due to the difficulty in assessment. The Brief Edinburgh Depression Scale (BEDS) is widely used within the UK and also in other countries but its use is limited by the lack of translations. In this study, we report the translation and validation of the BEDS in French.
Method: A group of experts translate the BEDS using back-to-back translation and the standard procedures of the EORTC. All the patients admitted to our Palliative Care Unit between November 2007 and April 2008 were eligible to take part in the study. The French BEDS was validated against the gold standard, a semi structured psychiatric interview (according to the SADS ou Schedule for Affective Disorders Scale). For this study full regional ethical approval was obtained.
Results: Forty-eight patients participated in the validation study. The prevalence of depression according to psychiatric interview was found to be 56.3% and the optimum cut-off of the French BEDS was 7, which yielded a sensitivity of 82.4% and a specificity of 68.4%.
Conclusion: We believe that the French BEDS is a valid and sensitive tool for screening depression, and that it can be used within the palliative care population. Further work might be necessary to extend its use to the wider oncology population.