Medical Dictionary
Main Entry:
Beck Depression Inventory Pronunciation:
'bek- Function:
noun : a standardized psychiatric questionnaire in which the subject rates eachstatement on a sliding scale and that is used in the diagnosis of depression
Beck, Aaron Temkin (b 1921) American psychiatrist. Beck held the concurrent positionsof professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, section chief at Philadelphia General Hospital, and consultant to Philadelphia's Veterans Administration Hospital. His areas of researchincluded depression, suicide, cognitive aspects of psychopathology, cognitive therapy, and anxiety and panic disorders. He developed his depression inventory in the 1970s as a diagnostic andtherapeutic tool for the treatment of childhood mood disorders. It uses a total of eighteen criteria for depressive illness.
