![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
Abstract
A brief online inventory was developed as a much needed corrective for the hundreds of unscientific tests that are used now by millions of people to self-diagnose mental health problems. The primary purpose of the new inventory is to refer people to mental health professionals for further evaluation when they are experiencing problems that might be diagnosable under DSM guidelines; it is not designed to diagnose, however. The inventory was found to be a valid and reliable measuring instrument based on analysis of data obtained from 3,403 subjects. The 54-item checklist looks for 18 common problems identified in the DSM-IV and takes from 5 to 10 min to complete. Test scores proved to be good predictors of a variety of self-reported criterion measures, including happiness, personal and professional success, history of hospitalization, history of therapy, current participation in therapy, employment, and level of education. Females were found to have slightly more mental health problems than males, but no differences in scores were found by race or ethnicity.
Acknowledgments
Presented at the 21st annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, San Francisco, May 2009. We thank Jessica Antt for assistance in test preparation and Robert Spitzer for comments on an early version of the test. The first author is currently affiliated with the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.
Notes
Sources: Aalto-Setala, Marttunen, Tuulio-Henriksson, Poikolainen, & Lonnqvist, Citation2001; Ingersoll & Burns, Citation2001; Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, Citation2005; National Institute of Mental Health, Citation2008; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999.
*Not currently listed in the DSM-IV, but likely to be included in the DSM-V and to have substantial prevalence (Beach & Kaslow, Citation2006; Beach, Walboldt et al., Citation2006; Denton, Citation2007).
**Although sexual dysfunction is fairly common (Heiman, Citation2002; Laumann, Paik, & Rosen, Citation1999), the prevalence of sexual problems that rise to the level of diagnosable disorders is unclear and thought to be quite small (Ingersoll & Burns, Citation2001).
Nonparametric statistical tests such as Spearman's rho, the Mann-Whitney U, and the Kruskal-Wallis H are used throughout this study because scores on the EMHI lie on an ordinal scale. The double asterisk is used to signify a significance level (p) of less than 0.01. A single asterisk is used to signify a significance level (p) of less than 0.05.