Differentiating major depression and panic disorders by self-report and clinical rating scales: ROC analysis and information theory.

The revised Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Cognition Checklist Depression and Anxiety subscales, revised Hamilton Psychiatric Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD-R), and the revised Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale were administered to 92 outpatients diagnosed only with major depression disorders and 50 outpatients diagnosed only with panic disorders. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate each instrument's ability to discriminate the two diagnostic groups. The optimum cut-off score for each scale was determined as a function of prevalence by maximizing information gain. The results indicated that the depression scales were better than the anxiety scales in discriminating the two groups. The HRSD-R was superior to the other depression scales, whereas all the anxiety scales displayed similar discriminating power.