Response time of respondents to separate points of the Derogatis questionnaire as a diagnostic marker of depressive disorders

• Main Author: K. I. Linska
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Zaporozhye State Medical University 2020-08-01
• Series: Zaporožskij Medicinskij Žurnal
• Subjects: depression; concomitant psychopathological symptoms; patient outcome assessment; audit test; derogatis questionnaire; chronometry; reaction time
• Online Access: http://zmj.zsmu.edu.ua/article/view/204950/206000
• ISSN: 2306-4145; 2310-1210

The purpose of this work is to assess the informativeness of the response time of respondents to separate points of the Derogatis questionnaire as a diagnostic marker of depressive disorders. Material and methods. A total of 97 patients with depression (main group) were examined, the average age was 40.94 ± 1.25 years (among them, 51 people with diagnosed depressive episode (F32 according to ICD-10) and 46 people with diagnosed recurrent depressive disorder (F33 according to ICD-10), as well as 64 practically healthy individuals with an average age of 41.21 ± 1.21 years (control group). We used clinical-psychopathological, psychometric (Derogatis questionnaire), as well as psychophysiological methods using Reocom-stress software and hardware complex (manufacturer KhAI-Medika,Kharkiv,Ukraine), with the function of recording the time for answering questions (response time). All the described methods were used twice during the study: with an interval of 17–19 days, at the beginning (examination No. 1) and at the end (examination No. 2) of the inpatient treatment course. Results. As a result of a comparative analysis of two information channels (traditional scores and response time to separate points of the Derogatis questionnaire), it was shown that the proportion of reaction time informativeness (in comparison with traditional scoring) increased in transition from survey No. 1 to survey No. 2 for markers of depressive disorders presence by 1.47 times (from 50.53 % to 74.29 %), and for markers of depressive disorders absence by 1.21 times (from 42.61 % to 51.76 %). Conclusions. It has been proven that the response time to the separate points of the Derogatis questionnaire regarding concomitant psychopathological symptoms are an informative tool for objective diagnosis of depression, as well as for monitoring the quality of therapy for patients with this pathology.