The purpose of the present study was to investigate the validity of the Japanese version of the Visual Analogue Mood Scales (VAMS; Sterns, 1997) and to determine cutoff scores. The VAMS was designed to assess mood in not only stroke patients but other patients with neurological impairments.

The VAMS scales were categorized into three groups of old age people with same mean age and sex ratio: 1. post-stroke patients (n=74); 2. subjects diagnosed with major depression (n=37); and 2. healthy community subjects (n=74). In order to investigate the validity of the VAMS, post-stroke subjects' and depressed subjects' VAMS scores were compared with their scores from the Geriatric Depression Short Form (GDS SF-15 items), the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (depressed subjects only). Findings indicate the VAMS can be used to validly assess mood among Japanese stroke patients.