Abstract

BAPTISTA, Makilim Nunes. Evaluating "depressions": from diagnostic criteria to psychometric scales. Aval. psicol. [online]. 2018, vol.17, n.3, pp. 301-310. ISSN 1677-0471.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15689/ap.2018.1703.14265.03.

The term "depression" can be used to refer to a fairly wide range of diagnoses and expressions of symptoms, so that two people may have completely different symptoms from each other, and yet both may have a similar diagnosis. Therefore, scales can be fundamental in the screening process, aiding in diagnosis and intervention with patients presenting clinically significant symptoms of depression. This article aims to discuss two current issues in psychological assessment. The first refers to different notes (description, importance, criticism) regarding the criteria in psychiatric manuals related to depressive disorders. The second theme discusses characteristics of the scales that evaluate depressive symptomatology and their specificities are discussed, since they may differ from each other, in several aspects such as basic theories, dimensionality, number of items, response type, life cycle specificities, application forms, among others.

Keywords : mood disorders; affective disorders; psychometry; scales; psychological evaluation.

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