The Arabic self-reporting questionnaire (SRQ) as a psychiatric screening instrument in medical patients.
BACKGROUND
The self-reporting questionnaire was originally developed by the WHO in order to screen for psychiatic disorders. To assess the validity of the Arabic self-reporting questionnaire (SRQ) as a screening instrument for psychiatric morbidity in a sample of Saudi medical patients.


METHODS
All patients referred for endoscopy underwent a semi-structured interview, and were then asked to fill out the SRQ. One hundred and sixty-six males and 126 females were included in the study.


RESULTS
Sixty percent of the subjects were identified by the SRQ as psychiatric cases, compared to 48.6% identified using the psychiatric interview. A cut-off point between six and seven, was found to yield a sensitivity of 93%, a specificity of 70%, and a misclassification rate of 19%. Females had more psychiatric morbidity than males.


CONCLUSIONS
The validity indices and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis support the usefulness of the SRQ as a cost-effective screening instrument for psychiatric morbidity in a two-stage large population research.
Al-Subaie
A S
AS
Division of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, King Saud University, and Security Forces Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed
K
K
Al-Malik
T
T