BACKGROUND Most mental health research tools are developed in Western, urban contexts. Few studies have evaluated the applicability of these research tools in rural populations of non-Western countries. We examined the cultural acceptance and psychometric performance of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) in China's rural villages. METHOD Ethnographic investigations were conducted ...

BACKGROUND Little is known about psychological risk factors in cerebrovascular disease. We examined the association between psychological distress and risk of death due to cerebrovascular disease. METHODS We obtained data from 68 652 adult participants of the Health Survey for England (mean age 54.9 [standard deviation 13.9] yr, 45.0% male sex) with no known history of cardiovascular diseases...

BACKGROUND Well-being is an important determinant of health and social outcomes. Measures of positive mental health states are needed for population-based research. The 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) has been widely used in many settings and languages, and includes positively and negatively worded items. Our aim was to test the hypothesis that the GHQ-12 assesses both positive an...

OBJECTIVES To explore the current psychological problems among Iraqi medical and dentistry students using a General Health Questionnaire after 6 years of armed conflicts. METHODS This study was carried out in the Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad, Iraq from January to May 2009. A total of 440 medical and dentistry students were asked to compl...

OBJECTIVES More mental morbidities were reported in medical students than their nonmedical peers, which may negatively influence their lives and future career. The aim of this study was to assess the mental health status among medical students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. METHOD Two hundred and eight 1(st) to 4(th) year Medical students took part in this cross-sectional study. Ge...

BACKGROUND Skin, which is the largest organ in the body, carries immense psychological significance. Disfiguring skin disorders may impact negatively on the mental health of individuals. AIM This study compared the psychiatric morbidity of subjects with leprosy and albinism. SUBJECTS AND METHODS One hundred subjects with leprosy and 100 with albinism were interviewed. Sociodemographic quest...

UNLABELLED The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was designed by Goldberg in the 1970's as a screening instrument to provide information on the mental wellbeing. Although it is widely used as a unidimensional instrument, factor analyses tend to suggest that it contains more than one dimension. AIM The purpose of this paper is to review the factor-analytic research that has been carried out w...

OBJECTIVE To know the psychometric properties of the GHQ-28 when it is applied to a sample of opiate-dependent patients. METHOD Participants were 138 opiate-dependent patients. Reliability was estimated by means of the Cronbach's alpha and Spearman-Brown coefficients. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was applied to check the four-factor structure proposed by Goldberg and Hillier. The sensitivity ...

BACKGROUND This study describes differences in trajectories of self-reported mental health in an ageing cohort, according to their housing, while controlling for confounders. METHODS The General Health Questionnaire was measured on six occasions as part of Whitehall II cohort study of office-based British civil servants (1985-2009); 10,308 men and women aged 35-55 at baseline. RESULTS Home-...

The EUropean Research on Incapacitating DIseases and Social Support (EURIDISS) is an international longitudinal study focusing on patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It elaborates on the impact of the chronic disease on patients’ daily lives. Rheumatoid arthritis, social support and quality of life are the central concepts within the project. Goldberg and Hillier’s 28-item scaled version o...