ArticleSocial psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology2011
Development and validation of a 6-day standard for the identification of frequent mental distress.
Article in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Poor mental health days and depressive disorders by informal cancer patient caregiver status: BRFSS 2022-23.Research square · 2026Article
- Association Between Physical Activity Dose and Mental Health Among Stroke Survivors.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2025Article
- Effects of Childcare, Work, and Caregiving Intensity on Male and Female Family Caregivers.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
- The Mental Health of Hispanic/Latino Americans Following National Immigration Policy Changes: United States, 2014-2018.American journal of public health · 2019Article
- Food and housing insecurity and health status among U.S. adults with and without prior military service.SSM - population health · 2016Article
- Gay Acres: Sexual Orientation Differences in Health Indicators Among Rural and Nonrural Individuals.The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association · 2016Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Health Outcomes Among Veteran and Non-Veteran Women.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2015Article
- Suicidal ideation and mental distress among adults with military service history: results from 5 U.S. states, 2010.American journal of public health · 2014Article
- Health inequalities among sexual minority adults: evidence from ten U.S. states, 2010.American journal of preventive medicine · 2014Article
- Housing instability and mental distress among US veterans.American journal of public health · 2013Article
- Article
- Health disparities among sexual minority women veterans.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2013Article
- A factor confirmation and convergent validity of the "areas of worklife scale" (AWS) to Spanish translation.Health and quality of life outcomes · 2013Article
- Health care utilization and health indicators among a national sample of U.S. veterans in same-sex partnerships.Military medicine · 2013Article
- A comparison of depression and mental distress indicators, Rhode Island Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2006.Preventing chronic disease · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThe goals of the current study were to assess the concurrent validity of a single-item measure of general mental distress with established, multi-item mental health measures used in population-level surveillance and to establish the optimal cutpoint for determining psychological distress (previously identified as frequent mental distress) using recently available data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey.
methodsData for this study were obtained from the core questionnaire and two optional modules available as part of the 2006 and 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys. Frequent mental distress (FMD) was identified by the number of days of self-reported poor mental health during the last 30 days. Comparisons of the number of days with poor mental health and positive scores for measures of depression and serious mental illness were calculated to identify the most efficient cutpoint for establishing FMD.
resultsComparisons of results obtained from ROC analyses using the PHQ-8 and K6 reported 0.867 (95% CI 0.861-0.872) and 0.840 (95% CI 0.836-0.845) of the area under the curve, respectively, suggesting good accuracy. Using the Youden index, 6 days of poor mental health in the past 30 days, rather than the existing 14-day standard, was identified as the point at which the sum of the sensitivity and specificity was greatest.
conclusionResults from this study suggest that a 6-day standard (FMD-6) can be used as a valid and reliable indicator of generalized mental distress with strong associations to both diagnosable depressive symptomology and serious mental illness.
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