Depression in France and Brazil: factorial structure of the 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale in inpatients.

Among various research strategies for depression, the cross-cultural approach is a useful tool to investigate depressive disorders. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression was applied to 130 depressed inpatients in France and Brazil. Items were factorized by principal component analysis with Varimax rotation using the Kaiser or simulation method for factor sorting. Three factors were obtained in France, and four in Brazil. The first factor includes the core symptoms of depression in both samples. Qualitative and quantitative differences appeared in the anxiety factor between Brazilian and French samples. Insomnia items appeared as another factor for both groups. A limitation of this study is that it was conducted with small inpatient samples. Principal component analysis of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression for depressive inpatients in these two countries showed a similar structure. Differences observed were in the way anxiety items were distributed.