Screening instruments for a population of older adults: The 10-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7)

• Cutoff scores of 19 and 23 were found for K10 when screening for minor or major depression in older adults.
• Cutoff scores of 5 were found for GAD-7 when screening for an anxiety disorder in older adults.
• K10 and GAD-7 are useful in discriminating between cases and non-cases of depression and anxiety.

ABSTRACTScreening tools that appropriately detect older adults׳ mental disorders are of great public health importance. The present study aimed to establish cutoff scores for the 10-item Kessler Psychological Distress (K10) and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) scales when screening for depression and anxiety. We used data from participants (n=1811) in the Enquête sur la Santé des Aînés-Service study. Depression and anxiety were measured using DSM-V and DSM-IV criteria. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis provided an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.767 and 0.833 for minor and for major depression when using K10. A cutoff of 19 was found to balance sensitivity (0.794) and specificity (0.664) for minor depression, whereas a cutoff of 23 was found to balance sensitivity (0.692) and specificity (0.811) for major depression. When screening for an anxiety with GAD-7, ROC analysis yielded an AUC of 0.695; a cutoff of 5 was found to balance sensitivity (0.709) and specificity (0.568). No significant differences were found between subgroups of age and gender. Both K10 and GAD-7 were able to discriminate between cases and non-cases when screening for depression and anxiety in an older adult population of primary care service users.