Development of a Men\u27s Depression Inventory

This paper details the development of a scale to more accurately assess depression in men. It first summarizes the literature on depression, depression assessment, and current research on men and masculinity. It is argued that current conceptualizations of both depression and masculinity influence prevalence studies, which consistently find that men experience depression half as often as women. It is argued that an assessment measure that accounts for masculine variants of depression (substance use, anger, withdrawal, and emotional restriction) may identify more frequent depression in men than previously expected. Next, the paper details the development of a men\u27s depression scale using classical test theory, followed by psychometric analysis of the scale using Rasch modeling and structural equation modeling. Implications on use of the scale and issues related to identifying men\u27s depression are discussed