title: The relationship among mental health status (GHQ-12), health related quality of life (EQ-5D) and health-state utilities in a general population.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the relationship between mental health and health-related quality of life (HRQL) in the general population, and to map GHQ-12 as a screening test for population psychological distress to a generic health state measure (EQ-5D) in order to estimate health state values and allow deriving quality-adjusted life years.
  
  
  METHODS
  Relationship between mental health and HRQL was examined from the 2004 Canary Islands' Health Survey. Participants were classified as probable psychiatric cases according to GHQ-12. HRQL was measured by the EQ-5D index. Multivariate lineal regression analysis was used to examine the association between mental health and HRQL adjusting by socio-demographic variables and comorbidities. A multivariate regression model was built from EQ-5D to estimate health states values using GHQ-12 as exposure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  EQ-5D index scores decreased as the GHQ-12 scores increased. Clinical and socio-demographic factors influenced HRQL without changing the overall trend for this negative relationship. The regression equation explained 43% of the variance. For estimation of utility scores, the model showed a high predictive capacity, with a mean forecast errors of 16%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  HRQL progressively decreased when the probability of being a psychiatric case increased. Findings enable health state values to be derived from GHQ-12 scores for populations where utilities has not or cannot be measured directly.
authors.affiliation: Planning & Evaluation Unit, Canary Islands Health Service, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Serrano-Aguilar
authors.forename: Yolanda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ramallo-Fariña
authors.forename: Maria del Mar
authors.initials: Mdel M
authors.lastname: Trujillo-Martín
authors.forename: Sergio Raul
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Muñoz-Navarro
authors.forename: Lilisbeth
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Perestelo-Perez
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: de las Cuevas-Castresana
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult