Development of a depression scale for veterans and war widows

We developed and evaluated a brief measure of depression for use within a population of older Australian war veterans and war widows. Derived from the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the 12-item GDS-Veterans is designed to include items that most closely represent the thoughts and feelings of older veterans in relation to their war experiences. The scale was administered to 1,620 veterans and widows concurrent with the 36-item Medical Outcomes Study Short Form (MOS SF-36) quality of life measure. Of those surveyed, 13.5% indicated that they often or always worry about things that happened during the war, indicating that this item tapped an important dimension for many of the veteran population. Scores on the GDS-Veterans were strongly correlated with the Mental Health subscale (-.72) and the Mental Health Component Summary Score (-.68) of the MOS SF-36 quality of life measure.