Depression scales are among the best-established of health measurements; as with the activities of daily living scales, some of the best measures are over 20 years old. Most of the scales have received rigorous testing and have been used in numerous studies spanning many countries. Our selection of depression scales was relatively simple for there is close agreement among review articles over the ten-or-so leading
methods in this field. This chapter describes purpose-built depression scales. In addition to these, most of the psychological well-being scales reviewed in Chapter 5 and the general health measures in Chapter 10 contain items or brief subscales covering depression.