Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale

Instructions: This set of questions is related to how you felt or behaved in the past week. Using the scale below, please write the number which best describes how often you felt or behaved this way during the past week.

0
rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day)

1
some or a little of the time (1-2 days)

2
a moderate amount of the time (3-4 days)

3
most or all of the time (5-7 days)

1_____ 1. You were bothered by things that usually dont bother you.

0_____ 2. You did not feel like eating; your appetite was poor.

1_____ 3. You felt that you could not shake off the blues even with help from your family and friends.

2_____ 4. You felt that you were just as good as other people. (R)

1_____ 5. You had trouble keeping your mind on what you were doing.

1_____ 6. You felt depressed.

1_____ 7. You felt that everything you did was an effort.

3_____ 8. You felt hopeful about the future. (R)

0_____ 9. You thought your life had been a failure.

0_____ 10. You felt fearful.

0_____ 11. Your sleep was restless.

3_____ 12. You were happy. (R)

1_____ 13. You talked less than usual.

1_____ 14. You felt lonely.

0_____ 15. People were unfriendly.

3_____ 16. You enjoyed life. (R)

1_____ 17. You had crying spells.

1_____ 18. You felt sad.

1_____ 19. You felt that people disliked you. 1_____20. You could not get going.

CES-D Scale Scoring Step 1: Reverse-score items 4, 8, 12, and 16 (the ones marked with an R). Change 0 to 3. Change 1 to 2. Change 2 to 1. Change 3 to 0. Step 2: Using the changed scores for those four items, now add your scores for ALL 20 items. Range of possible scores: 0 60 Psychologists use the cutoff of 16 to differentiate depressed persons from non-depressed ones. 16 20: mild depression 21 25: moderate depression 26 60: severe depression

citations: Radloff, L. (1977). The CES-D Scale: A self-report depression scale fro research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurements, 1, 385-401. Nezu, A. M., Nezu, C. M., McClure, K. S., & Zwick, M. L. (2002). Assessment of depression. In Gotlib, I. H., and Hammen, C. L. (eds.). Handbook of Depression (pp. 61-85). New York: Guilford. Chwastiak, L., Ehde, D. M., Gibbons, L. E., Sullivan, M., Bowen, J. D., and Kraft, G. H. (2002). Depressive symptoms and severity of illness in multiple sclerosis: Epidemiologic study of a large community sample. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 1862-1868. Unutzer, J., Patrick, D. L., Marmon, T., Simon, G. E., and Katon, W. J. (2002). Depressive symptoms and mortality in a prospective study of 2,558 older adults. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 10, 521-530.

Score: 12