information:extraction
Impact

The development of the BDI was an important event in psychiatry and psychology; it represented a shift in health care professionals' view of depression from a Freudian, psychodynamic perspective, to one guided by the patient's own thoughts or "cognitions". It also established the principle that instead of attempting to develop a psychometric tool based on a possibly invalid theory, self-report questionnaires when analysed using techniques such as factor analysis can suggest theoretical constructs.