The authors developed a depression scale in the Vietnamese language that
contains culturally consistent items describing the thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors of depressed individuals and items describing common clinical
characteristics of depressed Vietnamese patients. After pretesting, the
preliminary 43-item scale was given to 21 depressed Vietnamese patients and
a matched community sample of 44. Fifteen items accounted for 96% of the
variance between the two groups and were used as the final form of the
Vietnamese Depression Scale. A cutoff of 13 points (of a possible 34)
identified 91% of the patients and 96% of the community sample.Abstract Teaser