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Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-10: A Brief Measure for Routine Psychotherapy Outcome and Progress Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2021

W. Kim Halford Open the ORCID record for W. Kim Halford [Opens in a new window]  and
Aaron D.J. Frost
W. Kim Halford*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia
Aaron D.J. Frost
Affiliation:
Benchmark Psychology & Griffith University, Eight Mile Plains, Queensland, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Kim Halford, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia. Email: k.halford@psy.uq.edu.au
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Abstract

Routine outcome measurement and progress monitoring is well established to enhance quality assurance in clinical psychology service delivery but is not widely used in routine care. A major barrier to more widespread implementation is the lack of public domain, brief, psychometrically sound outcome measures that easily integrate into clinical information systems. The current study assessed a brief 10-item version of the widely used Depression Anxiety Stress (DASS)-42 scale, which we called the Depression Anxiety Stress-10 (DASS-10) scale. In two clinical samples of adults (n = 1036, 445 men, 591 women; and n = 1084, 493 men, 591 women), the DASS-10 had a replicable two-level factor structure, which at the lower level had two factors assessing stress-anxiety and depression, which each loaded onto a superordinate psychological distress scale. The items in the distress score discriminated between a clinical sample (n = 376) and a community sample (n = 379) and were sensitive to clinical change. The measure has the potential to make routine outcome measurement and progress monitoring more cost-effective to implement than existing measures, particularly when integrated with practice management software to make administration, scoring, and use easy.

Keywords

clinical outcomeprogress monitoringDepression Anxiety Stress Scaletherapy outcomefeedback informed therapy
Type
Standard Paper
Information
Behaviour Change , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 221 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy

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