A Systematic Scoping Review of Measures Used to Evaluate Treatment-Induced Changes in Depression, Anxiety, and Chronic Stress in People with Post-Stroke Aphasia.
Christie Carroll-Duhigg, Julian David, Richard M Arenas and 4 others
PMID 40857538WHAT IT FOUND
Most mental health measures used in aphasia research have unproven reliability and validity.
Proxy scales like the SADQ are common but often lack self-report confirmation. Use combined measures, such as proxy plus visual or adapted self-report, to reduce bias when assessing depression, anxiety or stress.
Key findings
01Psychometric evaluation of the ten most frequently used measures revealed reliability and validity concerns for all of them.
02Only three measures (ADRS, VAMS-Sad, and mPSS) showed relatively adequate evidence for use with people with aphasia, though methodological gaps remain.
03Approximately half of the included studies used language-dependent self-report measures, but only seven reported providing aphasia-friendly accommodations.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The review did not assess the risk of bias in the included studies. Most included studies had small sample sizes, with an average of 33 participants. People with aphasia were often excluded from the validation samples of the measures reviewed, making it difficult to confirm their accuracy for this specific population. The review found no validated 'gold standard' self-report measure for people with aphasia to use as a reference.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret significant pre-post changes on proxy measures as definitive evidence of treatment efficacy. These changes may reflect rater bias or the limitations of the measure itself, as proxy scales often differ from patient self-ratings and were not always validated in people with aphasia.