Discriminative capacity of the Spanish version of the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms-II (IDAS-II) for detecting DMS-5 specific disorders and poor quality of life in a clinical sample

TL;DR

The study evaluates how well the Spanish version of the IDAS-II can detect specific mental health disorders and poor quality of life in a clinical sample.

Contribution

The study provides diagnostic and quality of life cutoffs for the IDAS-II, enhancing its clinical utility.

Findings

IDAS-II scales like Suicidality and Panic showed good discrimination for specific disorders.

General Depression and Dysphoria scales effectively detected major depressive disorder.

IDAS-II scales better predicted Mental Health-related QoL than General Health-related QoL.

Abstract

Emotional problems can be evaluated using categorical approaches to guide treatment choices focused on targeting specific disorders, or dimensional approaches to reduce symptom severity. Moreover, recent evidence points out the need to intervene in patients’ quality of life (QoL), which often remains low even after the remission of emotional problems. Thus, assessment instruments are needed to provide information on diagnosis, symptom severity, and QoL. The present study aimed to provide diagnostic and QoL cutoffs for the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms-II (IDAS-II).

273 patients recruited from mental health services in Huelva (Spain) completed the IDAS-II, Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, and Short Form-36 Health Survey. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses were used to establish cutoff values. Diagnostic, balanced, and screening cutoffs were provided for each IDAS-II scale to detect corresponding diagnoses and poor QoL.

The specific IDAS-II scales Suicidality, Panic, Social Anxiety, Claustrophobia, and Traumatic Intrusions showed adequate discrimination values for their corresponding diagnoses (suicidal behavior disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively). Both the General Depression and Dysphoria scales showed adequate ability to detect major depressive disorder. The IDAS-II scales showed a higher discrimination ability for Mental Health-related QoL, than for General Health-related QoL.

The diagnostic and QoL cutoffs expand the clinical utility of the IDAS-II in clinical practice and research, making it a comprehensive, detailed, and versatile self-report tool. The IDAS-II allows for the assessment of emotional problems consistent with the dimensional, categorical, transdiagnostic, and QoL approaches.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12955-024-02270-x.