Buckby Joe A, Yung Alison R, Cosgrave Elizabeth M, Killackey Eoin J
ORYGEN Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
BMC Psychiatry. 2007 Sep 17;7:50. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-7-50.
The overlap between Depression and Anxiety has led some researchers to conclude that they are manifestations of a broad, non-specific neurotic disorder. However, others believe that they can be distinguished despite sharing symptoms of general distress. The Tripartite Model of Affect proposes an anxiety-specific, a depression-specific and a shared symptoms factor. Watson and Clark developed the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ) to specifically measure these Tripartite constructs. Early research showed that the MASQ distinguished between dimensions of Depression and Anxiety in non-clinical samples. However, two recent studies have cautioned that the MASQ may show limited validity in clinical populations. The present study investigated the clinical utility of the MASQ in a clinical sample of adolescents and young adults.
A total of 204 Young people consecutively referred to a specialist public mental health service in Melbourne, Australia were approached and 150 consented to participate. From this, 136 participants completed both a diagnostic interview and the MASQ.
The majority of the sample rated for an Axis-I disorder, with Mood and Anxiety disorders most prevalent. The disorder-specific scales of the MASQ significantly discriminated Anxiety (61.0%) and Mood Disorders (72.8%), however, the predictive accuracy for presence of Anxiety Disorders was very low (29.8%). From ROC analyses, a proposed cut-off of 76 was proposed for the depression scale to indicate 'caseness' for Mood Disorders. The resulting sensitivity/specificity was superior to that of the CES-D.
It was concluded that the depression-specific scale of the MASQ showed good clinical utility, but that the anxiety-specific scale showed poor discriminant validity.
抑郁症和焦虑症之间的重叠使得一些研究人员得出结论，认为它们是一种广泛的、非特异性神经症的表现。然而，其他人则认为，尽管它们有共同的一般痛苦症状，但仍可加以区分。情感的三方模型提出了一个焦虑特异性、一个抑郁特异性和一个共同症状因素。沃森和克拉克开发了情绪与焦虑症状问卷（MASQ）来专门测量这些三方结构。早期研究表明，MASQ能够在非临床样本中区分抑郁症和焦虑症的维度。然而，最近的两项研究警告说，MASQ在临床人群中的有效性可能有限。本研究调查了MASQ在青少年和青年临床样本中的临床效用。
在澳大利亚墨尔本，共有204名年轻人被连续转介到一家专业的公共心理健康服务机构，其中150人同意参与。其中，136名参与者完成了诊断访谈和MASQ。
大多数样本被评定为轴I障碍，情绪和焦虑障碍最为普遍。MASQ的障碍特异性量表显著区分了焦虑症（61.0%）和情绪障碍（72.8%），然而，焦虑症存在的预测准确性非常低（29.8%）。通过ROC分析，建议将抑郁量表的临界值设定为76，以表明存在情绪障碍。由此产生的敏感性/特异性优于CES-D。
得出的结论是，MASQ的抑郁特异性量表显示出良好的临床效用，但焦虑特异性量表显示出较差的区分效度。
