In a paper on screening for antepartum depression, the authors screen all subjects and perform confirmatory testing on participants testing high-risk for depression. They also report ROC-curves.
How can the authors report ROC-curves, when they haven't performed confirmatory testing on the negatives and therefore don't know the amount of false negatives?
"During screening, whenever a mother's depression score was in the moderate to severe symptom range (i.e., EPDS≥13 or PDSS≥80), the researcher suggested the mother receive the further mental health evaluation such as SCID or MINI and subsequently encouraged the mother to contact other mental health clinicians."1
1. Zhao, Y. et al. Combined use of the postpartum depression screening scale (PDSS) and Edinburgh postnatal depression scale (EPDS) to identify antenatal depression among Chinese pregnant women with obstetric complications. Psychiatry Res 226, 113–119 (2015).
You are correct that the authors should have evaluated all cases because the ROC calculations require knowing both sensitivity and specificity.
On another topic, the recommendation of the SCID would be appropriate for research applications, but may not be appropriate for routine clinical practice. The update of the SCID to the DSM-5 criteria would be required, but the interview is much too long for routine clinical practice. The depression section could be extracted to provide a more practical interview. The other alternative would be to simply construct a set of questions that cover the diagnostic criteria, as the criteria are quite specific and straightforward.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Phytochemistry
- Extracts