An inventory for measuring depression.

PHILADELPHIA The difficulties inherent in obtaining consistent and adequate diagnoses for the purposes of research and therapy have been pointed out by a number of authors. Pasamanick12 in a recent article viewed the low interclinician agreement on diagnosis as an indictment of the present state of psychiatry and called for "the development of objective, measurable and verifiable criteria of classification based not on personal or parochial considerations, buton behavioral and other objectively measurable manifestations." Attempts by other investigators to subject clinical observations and judgments to objective measurement have resulted in a wide variety of psychiatric rating ~ c a l e s . ~ J ~ These have been well summarized in a review article by Lorr l1 on "Rating Scales and Check Lists for the E v a 1 u a t i o n of Psychopathology." In the area of psychological testing, a variety of paper-andpencil tests have been devised for the purpose of measuring specific personality traits; for example, the Depression-Elation Test, devised by Jasper in 1930. This report describes the development of an instrument designed to measure the behavioral manifestations of depression. In the planning of the research design of a project aimed at testing certain psychoanalytic formulations of depression, the necessity for establishing an appropriate system for identifying depression was recognized. Because of the reports on the low degree of interclinician agreement on diagnosis,13 we could not depend on the clinical diagnosis, but had to formulate a method of defining depression that would be reliable and valid. The available instruments were not considered adequate for our purposes. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, for example, was not specifically designed