ABSTRACT
Objectives:
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is very prevalent and incapacitating and there is a common persistence of functional impairment after clinical remission. Research that proposes to study rehabilitation in TDM is necessary. There is a lack of instruments that evaluate the functionality in subjects with TDM. We aim to observe the psychometric properties of the FAST scale in Brazilian sample, cases (n = 44) and not cases (n = 44) of MDD.
Methods:
a) Questionnaires with socioeconomic information and Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview 5.0.0 scale for screening in outpatient waiting room of two public universities of the State of São Paulo; b) face-to-face interviews with the FAST, Global Functional Assessment and Hamilton Depression Scale instruments.
Results:
Strong correlations between FAST and AGF (rho = −0.85) and between each subscale and total scale (rho = 0.86), good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.98) and test-retest reliability weighted >0.84). The discriminative validity study evidenced that the FAST discriminates the cases of non-cases of MDD, as well as moderate/severe cases of the others.
Conclusion:
The psychometric properties of FAST in 88 subjects showed good reliability and validity to assess the impact of depression on functionality in Brazilians with MDD. Future studies with larger samples are recommended.
Keywords
Functionality; depression; psychometric properties; scale