Development and validation of English version of COVID-19 Depression Scale for health-care workers

Health‑care workers (HCWs) are highly vulnerable to depression during an epidemic outbreak. Protecting the mental well‑being of HCWs is a priority while battling with COVID‑19. However, documentation on COVID‑19‑related depression among HCWs is scarce due to the limited availability of measuring scales. Hence, this study was purposed to develop a scale to measure depression relating to COVID‑19 and evaluate its psychometric properties among HCWs.

A validation study was carried out among 320 HCWs including physicians of various medical specialties, dental specialists, and nurses in the year 2020. Exploratory factor analysis using Promax rotation with Kaiser normalization for the determination of factor structure was employed in data analysis using SPSS version 16 software.

COVID‑19 Depression Scale for HCWs (CDS‑HW) demonstrated a two‑component structure identified as “work‑related anxiety” and “psychological distress.” The mean CDS‑HW score of the study participants was observed to be 23.67 ± 2.82, and the scale demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha: 0.741).

CDS‑HW is a rapidly administrable, valid, and reliable tool that can be used to measure COVID‑19‑related depression among HCWs.