Screening for perinatal depression is essential. The Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS; Beck & Gable, 2002) is a self-report instrument, composed of 35 items. The Portuguese version of the PDSS revealed to be a valid instrument to screen for perinatal depression (Pereira et al., 2010a,b).

To develop PDSS short version and to determine its cut-off points and associated conditional probabilities to screen for depression according to DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria.

Participants were 452 women in their third month post-partum (M = 13.07 weeks post-partum; SD = 1.808). All women completed the Portuguese PDSS and were interviewed using the Mood Disorders Section/Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies. To select items for the short version the items that showed the highest correlations with their respective seven dimension scores were retained. ROC analysis was applied and both cut-off points and associated conditional probabilities adjusted to the real prevalence were determined.

For major depression/DSM-IV the cut-off point of 15, resulted in sensitivity of 77.8%, specificity of 88.9%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 21.7% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 98.9%; for depressive disorder/ICD-10 the cut-off point of 14 determined sensitivity 77.3%, specificity 84.0%, PPV 19.7%, NPV 98.6%; for mild/moderate depression with somatic syndrome or severe depression without psychotic symptoms/ICD-10 the cut-off point of 18 was associated to sensitivity 91.7%, specificity 94.5%, PPV 31.4% and NPV 99.8%.

The Portuguese short version of PDSS is a good alternative to the 35-items version, equally valid and precise, but more economic, faster and easier.