The present study describes the translation process of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) into Slovenian language and testing its reliability and validity on psychological morbidity in female cancer patients.

The HADS consists of 14 items to assess anxiety (7 items) and depression (7 items). Each item is rated from 0 to 3. The maximum score on either subscale is 21. Scores of 11 or more on either subscales are considered to be a significant 'case' of psychological morbidity (clinical caseness), while scores of 8-10 represent ‘mood disorder’ (‘borderline’). A score of 7 or below is considered as normal.

The English version of the HADS was translated into Slovene language using the 'forward-backward' procedure. The questionnaire was used in a study of 202 female cancer patients together with a clinical structured interview (CSI) to measure psychological state. A biserial correlation coefficient was calculated.

The mean score of participants rating on the HADS-A was 11,6 (sd 4,49) and on the HADS-D was 9,2 (sd 4,46). The value of biserial correlation coefficient was 0.81 for the depression scale and 0.91 for the anxiety scale.

The validation process of the Slovenian HADS score version shows metric properties similar to those in international studies, suggesting that it measures the same constructs, in the same way, as the original HADS score form. This validation study of the Slovenian version of the HADS proved that it is an acceptable and valid measure of psychological distress among female cancer patients.