Depression and anxiety are the common non-psychotic mental disorders experienced most frequently by women living in resource-constrained low and lower-middle income countries [1, 2]. Early detection of these problems in primary health care is essential to identifying women who might be offered targeted treatments and therefore to improving prognosis among them and reducing disability in the community [3]. As the competing health priorities of infectious illness and malnutrition are diminishing in these settings, awareness of mental health is growing. There is an increasing need for screening tools, which primary health care staff can use, to identify people experiencing common mental disorders in the community.
The relationship between depression and anxiety has been of longstanding interest to clinicians and researchers. Clark and Watson [4] proposed a tripartite model of anxiety and depression. This model suggests that both conditions share several symptoms of elevated negative effect (e.g. distress and irritability). Depression is characterised by low levels of positive effect including experiences of happiness, confidence, and enthusiasm, while physiological hyperarousal is unique to anxiety. Even though depression and anxiety are conceptually distinct, there is substantial overlap between the two states that makes them difficult to distinguish in screening.
The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS, [5]) is a widely used screening tool to assess symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in community settings. This instrument comprises three sub-scales: (1) the Depression sub-scale which measures hopelessness, low self-esteem, and low positive affect; (2) the Anxiety scale which assesses autonomic arousal, musculo-skeletal symptoms, situational anxiety and subjective experience of anxious arousal; and (3) the Stress scale which assesses tension, agitation, and negative affect. There are two forms of the DASS, the full 42-item and the short 21-item versions. Both assess the same domains.
There is evidence of the validity of the DASS for the use in both clinical and community settings in English-speaking countries including Australia [6, 7], the United States of America [8], Canada [9], and England [10]. This tool has also been translated and validated in other languages including Chinese [11], Malay [12], Italian [13], and Spanish [14]. Both English and non-English versions have high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha scores of > 0.7). Previous investigations in English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries have found significant correlations between DASS scores and other measures including the Beck Anxiety and Beck Depression Scales (correlation coefficients, r, ranged from 0.58 to 0.78, [6]), the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (r = 0.69, [10]), and Symptom Checklist-90-R (r ranged from 0.57 to 0.84, [14]). However, there has not yet been a validation study of the DASS21 against a clinical diagnostic test to propose and verify cut-off scores to detect common mental disorders.
There is only a small set of psychometric instruments to detect symptoms of common mental disorders that have been validated for use in Vietnam. Our team has established the psychometric properties of Zung’s Self-rated Anxiety Scale, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and General Health Questionnaire 12 items for screening for common mental disorders including depression and anxiety during pregnancy and in the postpartum year [15] and the Self Reporting Questionnaire-20 items to establish psychiatric caseness in adult women [16]. The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale is a brief screening instrument, which is of particular value because it can assess multiple domains and is psychometrically sound in Anglophone and no-Anglophone settings, but its comprehensibility and psychometric properties in resource-constrained countries have not yet been established [8].
The aim of this study was to establish the comprehensibility and psychometric properties including internal reliability and criterion validity of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale as a screening instrument for depression and / or anxiety in women with young children living in rural northern Vietnam.