There are few population-level insights into the use of traditional healers and other forms of alternative care for the treatment of common mental disorders in sub-Saharan Africa. We examined the extent to which alternative practitioners are consulted, and predictors of traditional healer visits. A national survey was conducted with 3651 adult South Africans between 2002 and 2004, using the Wor...

OBJECTIVE Clinical diagnosis has been shown to be unreliable compared to structured diagnostic schedules. However, clinicians rarely use structured diagnostic schedules due to concerns about the feasibility in clinical practice and about patient acceptance. Mini International Neuropsychiatric Schedule is a short diagnostic instrument validated against SCID and CIDI but its feasibility and patie...

IMPORTANCE Screening adolescents for substance use and intervening immediately can reduce the burden of addiction and substance-related morbidity. Several screening tools have been developed to identify problem substance use for adolescents, but none have been calibrated to triage adolescents into clinically relevant risk categories to guide interventions. OBJECTIVE To describe the psychometr...

BACKGROUND Urban and rural populations have different rates of psychotic illness. If psychosis exists as a continuous phenotype in nature, urban-rural population differences in the rate of psychotic disorder should be accompanied by similar differences in the rate of abnormal mental states characterized by psychotic or psychosislike symptoms. METHODS A random sample of 7076 individuals aged 1...

CONTEXT Although significant associations of childhood adversities (CAs) with adult mental disorders have been widely documented, associations of CAs with onset and persistence of disorders have not been distinguished. This distinction is important for conceptual and practical purposes. OBJECTIVE To examine the multivariate associations of 12 retrospectively reported CAs with persistence of a...

BACKGROUND The American Indian Service Utilization, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Risk and Protective Factors Project (AI-SUPERPFP) estimated the mental health burden and associated help-seeking in select American Indian reservation communities. OBJECTIVE To determine the lifetime and 12-month prevalence of common DSM-IV disorders, their demographic correlates, and patterns of help-seeking in 2 c...

OBJECTIVE The present research examined the relation of psychiatric disorders to tobacco dependence and cessation outcomes. METHOD Data were collected from 1,504 smokers (58.2% women; 83.9% White; mean age = 44.67 years, SD = 11.08) making an aided smoking cessation attempt as part of a clinical trial. Psychiatric diagnoses were determined with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview...

BACKGROUND Although the proposal for a dissociative subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in DSM-5 is supported by considerable clinical and neurobiological evidence, this evidence comes mostly from referred samples in Western countries. Cross-national population epidemiologic surveys were analyzed to evaluate generalizability of the subtype in more diverse samples. METHODS Intervie...

Anxiety has been linked to onset of cardiovascular disease. This study examines the differential impact of types of anxiety (panic, phobia and worry) on 3-year onset of non-fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD). By investigating anxiety disorders as opposed to anxiety symptoms and by using a reliable diagnostic instrument to assess anxiety, limitations of previous studies are considered. 5149 pers...

BACKGROUND Personality traits are not only associated with psychiatric symptoms, but also with treatment seeking behavior. Our purpose was to examine the relationship between mental health service utilization and personality characteristics in a nationwide community sample of Korean adults. METHOD Of the 6022 subjects aged 18-74 years who participated in the Korean Epidemiologic Catchment Are...