LAUSR

Depression is escalating among Bangla speaking people. About 300 million people speak in Bangla. However, a valid Bangla Depression rating scale is missing to assess their depression. Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) is a clinician rated 10 item scale widely used for depression assessment. This study aimed to validate this scale in Bangla. The study was conducted from July 2013 to August 2015 at outpatient department of Psychiatry of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Bangladesh. Bangla MADRS scale development process started with the development of conceptional definition of each items of the original scale followed by forward, backward and committee translation. This translated Bangla MADRS was pretested and necessary correction was made for better understating and acceptance. Then its psychometric properties were assessed from consecutive randomly selected 111 depressed patients. The Bangla MADRS exhibited excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha=0.87), inter rater reliability and test retest reliability (Pearson coefficient r=0.77). To assess the concurrent validity the correlation between the findings of MADRS was evaluated with that of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) that revealed a significant correlation (r=0.73). Moreover, the Factor analysis showed 56% of the variance can be explained by apparent sadness and reported sadness. This Bangla MADRS can have a long and wide spread impact and implication in depression assessment, management and future research for Bangla speaking people.