Validation of the Quality of Life in Depression Scale in a population of adult depressive patients aged 60 and above.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of the Dutch version of the Quality of Life in Depression Scale (QLDS) in a population of depressive patients aged 60 years and over, who were seen on an outpatient basis by psychiatrists in the Flemish region of Belgium. A sample of severely depressive patients was followed during an eight-week medical treatment. During this period, each patient was evaluated four times with the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and with the QLDS. We observed that the QLDS was very sensitive to the failing of the quality of life in depressive states. The QLDS was also a very good measure of change during the improvement of depressives states. Furthermore, the scale appears to be very homogeneous across the depressive states range. The results are very encouraging, and constitute strong corroboration of the construct validity of the scale.