Screening for serious mental illness in the general population.
BACKGROUND
Public Law 102-321 established a block grant for adults with "serious mental illness" (SMI) and required the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to develop a method to estimate the prevalence of SMI.


METHODS
Three SMI screening scales were developed for possible use in the SAMHSA National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: the Composite International Diagnostic Interview Short-Form (CIDI-SF) scale, the K10/K6 nonspecific distress scales, and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHO-DAS). An enriched convenience sample of 155 respondents was administered all screening scales followed by the 12-month Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). We defined SMI as any 12-month DSM-IV disorder, other than a substance use disorder, with a GAF score of less than 60.


RESULTS
All screening scales were significantly related to SMI. However, neither the CIDI-SF nor the WHO-DAS improved prediction significantly over the K10 or K6 scales. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of SMI was 0.854 for K10 and 0.865 for K6. The most efficient screening scale, K6, had a sensitivity (SE) of 0.36 (0.08) and a specificity of 0.96 (0.02) in predicting SMI.


CONCLUSIONS
The brevity and accuracy of the K6 and K10 scales make them attractive screens for SMI. Routine inclusion of either scale in clinical studies would create an important, and heretofore missing, crosswalk between community and clinical epidemiology.
Kessler
Ronald C
RC
Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180 Longwood Ave, Suite 215, Boston, MA 02115, USA. kessler@hcp.med.harvard.edu
Barker
Peggy R
PR
Colpe
Lisa J
LJ
Epstein
Joan F
JF
Gfroerer
Joseph C
JC
Hiripi
Eva
E
Howes
Mary J
MJ
Normand
Sharon-Lise T
SL
Manderscheid
Ronald W
RW
Walters
Ellen E
EE
Zaslavsky
Alan M
AM
D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008403:Mass Screening; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015995:Prevalence; D011336:Probability; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012372:ROC Curve; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D014482:United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration