ORIGINAL ARTICLE Recognition of Depression in Older Medical Inpatients

older (aged 65 or more) medical inpatients show low rates of recognition of depression by attending physi-cians. However, few studies have compared different measures of recognition of depression. OBJECTIVES: (1) To compare the validity of four indicators of recognition of depression and a global measure of recognition against a diagnosis of depres-sion and (2) to explore the effect of patient character-istics on recognition of depression. METHODS: In a cohort of 264 medical inpatients 65 years and older (115 with major or minor depression, 78 with no depression), sensitivities, specificities, and diagnostic odds ratios (DOR) of 4 indicators of recogni-tion (symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and referral) and a global measure of recognition (any of the 4 indicators