Brief screen to identify 5 of the most common forms of psychosocial distress in cardiac patients: validation of the screening tool for psychological distress.

OBJECTIVE

To develop and validate a brief psychosocial screening tool (Screening Tool for Psychological Distress [STOP-D]) for use in the outpatient cardiology setting.

BACKGROUND

Psychosocial factors contribute significantly to the morbidity and mortality associated with coronary artery disease. Yet, it is often considered overly burdensome to implement full-scale psychological assessments for every patient.

METHODS

Over 3 months, 194 cardiac patients were consecutively recruited from 3 cardiac clinics: heart transplant (pre and post), cardiac rehabilitation, and adult congenital heart. Subjects filled out a questionnaire that included: (1) demographics, (2) STOP-D, (3) Beck Depression Inventory-II, (4) Beck Anxiety Inventory, (5) State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2, and (6) MOS Social Support Survey.

RESULTS

Analyses reveal all STOP-D items are highly correlated with the corresponding measures and have robust receiver operating characteristic curves. Severity scores on STOP-D-depression and STOP-D-anxiety correlate well with established severity cutoff scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and the Beck Anxiety Inventory, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the STOP-D performs very well when compared with other longer and validated measures. The STOP-D is a 5-item self-report measure, which provides severity scores for: depression, anxiety, stress, anger, and poor social support. The STOP-D is self-administered and takes between 1 and 2 minutes to fill out, gives valid severity scores on 5 key areas of psychological distress (depression, anxiety, stress, anger, and poor social support), requires no scoring, and is free to use.