[Mental health in the age group 4-15 years based on the results of the national survey of health 2006, Spain].
BACKGROUND
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is one of the most internationally widely used questionnaire to measure mental health. The aim of this study is to analyze the discrimination cutoff of the questionnaire in Spanish population and the association between the Spanish children mental health and the variables gender, municipality size and health status in the last twelve months.


METHODS
The results of the Spanish National Health Survey-2006 were used with a selected sample of 6390 children between 4 and 15 years. Through discriminant analysis and ROC curves, we analyzed the cutoff score provide in the SDQ-parent with Spanish population and the measures of association are forecasted with respect to the independent variables.


RESULTS
the cutoff equal to 20, used in the SDQ-parent with Spanish population, provided a sensitivity of 0,964 and a specificity of 0,945. The relationship between mental health and sex (OR 1,17) and municipality size (OR 0,85) gave not significant p-value (p>0,05). However, this relation get a significant p-value for the variable health situation in the last twelve months (OR 0,30; p<0,05).


CONCLUSIONS
The cutoff score equal to 20 is adequate to discriminate the Spanish children mental health through the SDQ-parent version. The influence between health situation in the last year and mental health is accepted, compared to a lack of influence of gender and municipality size variables.
Departamento de Psicología y Antropología, Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, España. fernandofajardo@unex.es
Fernando
F
Fajardo Bullón
Benito
B
León Del Barco
Elena
E
Felipe Castaño
Eduardo Joao
EJ
Ribeiro Dos Santos
D019540:Area Under Curve; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D008603:Mental Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010290:Parents; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012737:Sex Factors; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires