An international group developed the GRID-HAMD to address critiques of the HAMD and improve its administration. The GRIDHAMD provides novel grid scoring, structured interview guide and scoring conventions, and revised anchor points for problematic or inconsistently rated items.

To conduct a survey of clinicians’ experience using the GRID-HAMD.

To evaluate the clinical acceptability of GRID-HAMD.

A survey distributed to 74 clinical trial raters covered usability and ease of use of the GRID-HAMD, including 20 statements rated from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and listed four statements asking raters to compare the GRID-HAMD with the SIGH-D.

Fifty-seven questionnaires were completed (77%). Most raters agreed that wording of GRID-HAMD questions made it easy to administer (77%), the conventions were clear (82%) and helpful (86%), and guidelines for rating symptom intensity were clear (79%). Fewer rated it ‘easy to decide on a frequency level’ (61%). A large majority (89%) thought ‘having the scoring conventions integrated into the interview guide has made scoring easier.’ More than half (54%) of 44 raters who had used both preferred the graphical layout. However, slightly more preferred the SIGH-D for its ‘ease of use’ (50% vs. 45%) and ‘efficiency’ (39% vs. 36%), and expressed ‘overall preference for the SIGH-D’ (45% vs. 43%).

The raters evaluated clarity and ease of use of the GRID-HAMD positively. Surprisingly, they did not indicate overall preference for the GRID-HAMD over the SIGH-D. Several areas of improvement were indicated for both, and the ‘most difficult’ items were highlighted.