Research report Psychometric properties of the Gotland Scale for Depression in Italian psychiatric inpatients and its utility in the prediction of suicide risk Marco Innamorati a , Maurizio Pompili a,b, ⁎, Xenia Gonda c , Mario Amore d , Gianluca Serafini a , Cinzia Niolu e , David Lester f , Wolfgang Rutz g , Zoltan Rihmer c , Paolo Girardi a a Department of Neuroscience, Mental Health and Sensory Functions, Suicide Prevention Center, Sant'Andrea Hospital, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy b McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA c Department of Clinical and Theoretical Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary d Department of Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, University of Parma, Italy e Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome-Tor Vergata, Italy f The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, USA g Unit for Public Mental Health, University Hospital, Uppsala, Fakultät für Soziale Arbeit und Gesundheit, Uppsala, Sweden article info abstract Article history: Received 2 November 2010 Received in revised form 13 January 2011 Accepted 1 February 2011 Available online 2 March 2011 Background: Rutz has postulated a “male depressive syndrome” measured by the Gotland Scale of Male Depression (GSMD). The aim of the study was to assess the psychometric properties of the GSMD in a sample of male and female psychiatric inpatients. Methods: The sample was composed of 326 Italian inpatients who completed the GSMD and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). Results: Our results indicated that all the items of the GSMD, except item #13, were highly interrelated, and that the first 12 items of the GSMD may be considered a homogeneous measure of depression. Furthermore, GSMD scores did not differ by sex. The GSMD had good convergent validity with the BHS and was useful in categorizing individuals admitted for a suicide attempt committed in the last 48 h vs. those who had not. Limitations: The study was retrospective in nature and did not assess the ability of the GSMD for predicting future suicidal behavior. Conclusions: The GSMD may be considered to be a valid instrument for measuring non-typical (“suicidality-related”) symptoms of depression in both male and female patients. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Male depression Gender Hopelessness Suicide risk Validity 1. Introduction Following the evaluation of his educational program on depression and suicide prevention on the Swedish Island of Gotland, Rutz (1999, 1995) postulated a “male depressive syndrome” which differs from the common depressive symp- toms found in females. It includes atypical symptoms such as irritability, anger and alcohol use, which may mislead clinicians trying to detect depression in men. Rutz constructed the Gotland Scale of Male Depression (GSMD), a screening measure specifically devised for detecting depression in men, which has undergone two validation studies (Zierau et al., 2002). For example, Moller-Leimkuhler et al. (2004) investigated whether the symptoms that constitute the male depressive syndrome differentiate between 2411 male and female inpatients with unipolar depression. They reported that the scores for most of the items did not differ between males and females. In order to identify gender-related differences in symptom patterns, the authors conducted a principal com- ponent factor analysis with a varimax rotation for the whole sample as well as separately for male and female inpatients. There was evidence of differences in symptom clustering dependent upon gender. While typical depressive symptoms Journal of Affective Disorders 132 (2011) 99–103 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Dept. of Psychiatry, Sant'Andrea Hospital, 1039 Via di Grottarossa, 1035, Italy. Tel.: +39 06 33775675; fax: +39 06 33775342. E-mail addresses: maurizio.pompili@uniroma1.it, mpompili@mclean.harvard.edu (M. Pompili). 0165-0327/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2011.02.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Affective Disorders journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jad