The psychometrics of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale supports a shorter -12 item- version.

The diagnosis of patients suffering from both anxiety and depression is complex due to mixed effects of the two disorders. This complexity has hardened the task to find an adapted treatment for these patients. Consequently, several instruments, known as depression anxiety scales, have been developed and are now used internationally by physicians to determine the diagnosis of anxiety and depression and treat the patients accordingly. This study aims at testing the consistency and reliability of one of the main anxiety and depression scale which is composed of 14 items, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). We have used explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and factor extraction by principal component analysis (PCA) with orthogonal varimax (Kaiser Normalization) rotation on a cohort of 9706 French depressed patients. The relevance of the 14 items included in the HADS was also scrutinized by measuring the internal consistency and reliability of the global HADS removing each item one by one. Our conclusion is that the HADS could potentially gain in consistency in the detection of anxiety, notably through the revision of two of the anxiety items.