[Psychometric properties of the Beck depression inventory-II (BDI-II) among adolescent psychiatric patients].

A revised version of the Beck depression inventory (BDI-II) has been translated into German. Until now the BDI-II has only been evaluated in several American studies with clinical and nonclinical samples of adolescents. 111 adolescent psychiatric patients (ages ranged from 15-18 years) participated in a study to evaluate reliability, construct and factorial validity, as well as the diagnostic discrimination of the BDI-II. Internal consistency was high (alpha=0.92), showing the homogeneity of the instrument. Associations with other clinical (parent and self report) instruments point in the expected direction and support the external validity of the BDI-II. A factor-analysis generated inconclusive results. The BDI-II differentiated very well between a subsample of depressed adolescents (n=46), a subsample of non-depressed adolescent patients (n=53) and a nonclinical sample (n=31). The results of this study support the use of the BDI-II as a severity measure of depressive symptoms among adolescent psychiatric patients.