British Journal of Clinical Psychology

Background and objectives.  The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a widely used measure of depression severity in both research and clinical contexts. This study aimed at assessing its stability and associations with ongoing drug use in a sample of patients in opiate agonist maintenance treatment who were not abstinent from illicit drugs.

Design and method.  The study was a prospective, naturalistic study. Subjects in enhanced or standard psychosocial services along with opiate agonist maintenance treatment were administered the BDI and the European Addiction Severity Index (EuropASI) twice by research technicians, approximately 2 weeks after intake and at 18 months follow‐up.

Findings.  There were rather small mean changes from intake to follow‐up in the BDI, and mean‐level stability in subjects was rather high as evidenced by a high intra‐class correlation between intake score and follow‐up score. The stability of the BDI was reduced at high levels of drug use severity at intake, and BDI was a moderate predictor of drug use severity at follow‐up.

Conclusions.  The BDI measures a construct that is both stable and of predictive validity in a sample of non‐abstinent opiate agonist maintenance patients, although very severe drug use at baseline appeared to reduce the stability of the BDI.