How to process DASS-21 Scale?

 DASS-21 Scale

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) is the shortened version of the DASS, a commonly used method to detect mental health problems, developed by Lovibond and Lovibond at Australia [1] to assess depression, anxiety and stress symptoms among adult peoples. It is available in different languages and can be download tools in different language through a official website: http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/dass/translations.htm. There are two different version of DASS-21 scale, adult version (DASS-21) and youth version (DASS-Y).

The nepali and english version of DASS-21 Scale (adult version) can be downloaded from the link below:

English tool[2]

Nepali tool[2]

Other translation of  DASS-21 [2] can be reached from the list below:

Albanian, Arabic, Bangla, Basque, Bosnian,  Malay, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, GreekGujarati, Haitian, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malaysian, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Taiwanese, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese

The english version of DASS-Y (Youth  version) can be downloaded from the link below:

English tool[2]

Each questions from adult version of DASS-21 and youth version of DASS-Y are categorized for anxiety, depression and stress. The categorization is given below: 

• Question number 1,6,8, 11,12,14 and 18 for Stress symptoms
• Question number 2,4,7,9,15,19 and 20 for Anxiety symptoms
• Question number 3,5,10,13,16,17 and 21 for Depression symptoms

How to calculate scores?

The DASS-21(adult version) scale consist of 21 items (7 items each for depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms). The value of each items on a scale ranges from 0 to 3, where 0 indicates “did not apply to me at all” ,1 indicates "applied to me to some degree, or some of the time" , 2 indicates "Applied to me to a considerable degree or a good part of time" and 3 indicates “Applied to me very much or most of the time”.  But for DASS-Y scale, the value of each items ranges from 0 to 3 where 0 indicates "NOT TRUE", 1 indicates "A LITTLE TRUE", 2 indicates " FAIRLY TRUE", 3 indicates "TRUE".

Total scores for depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms are calculated by summing up the scores of each items, multiplied by factor two.

We classified patients into mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe conditions of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms based on the total score within each subdomain. Depression scores were classified as:  normal (0-9), mild (10-13), moderate (14-20), severe (21-27), and extremely severe (27+). Anxiety score was classified as: normal  (0-7), mild (8-9), moderate (10-14), severe (15-19), and extremely severe (20+). Stress score was classified as: normal (0-14), mild (15-18), moderate (19-25), severe (26-33), and extremely severe (34+).

References

1. Lovibond SH, Lovibond PF (1995) Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale. Sydney: Psychology Foundation.

2. http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/dass/