ArticleGlobal mental health (Cambridge, England)2024
Validation of a brief screener for broad-spectrum mental and substance-use disorders in South Africa.
Article in Global mental health (Cambridge, England), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy of mental health screening tools applicable to adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Validation of screening instruments for alcohol and substance use disorders among men and women in Eastern Cape, South Africa.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Article
- Validation of screening instruments for common mental disorders and suicide risk in south African primary care settings.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Erratum: Validation of a brief screener for broad-spectrum mental and substance-use disorders in South Africa - ERRATUM.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- An Ultra-Brief Proxy Measure for Early Mental and Substance Use Disorders and Suicide Risk Case Detection at the Community and Household Level: An Efficient and Feasible Clinical and Population-level Service Needs Screening Tool.Medical research archives · 2023Article
- Psychometric evaluation of the psychosis screening questionnaire in South Africa with attention to overlap between symptoms and normative cultural beliefs.World cultural psychiatry research review : official journal of World Association of Cultural Psychiatry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
16 authors at 10 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In low-resource settings, valid mental health screening tools for non-specialists can be used to identify patients with psychiatric disorders in need of critical mental health care. The Mental Wellness Tool-13 (mwTool-13) is a 13-item screener for identifying adults at risk for common mental disorders (CMDs) alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), substance-use disorders (SUD), severe mental disorders (SMDs), and suicide risk (SR). The mwTool-13 is administered in two steps, specifically, only those who endorse any of the initial three questions receive the remaining ten questions. We evaluated the performance of mwTool-13 in South Africa against a diagnostic gold standard. We recruited a targeted, gender-balanced sample of adults, aged ≥18 years at primary and tertiary healthcare facilities in Eastern Cape Province. Of the 1885 participants, the prevalence of CMD, AUD, SMD, SR, and SUD was 24.4%, 9.5%, 8.1%, 6.0%, and 1.6%, respectively. The mwTool-13 yielded high sensitivities for CMD, SMD, and SR, but sub-optimal sensitivities for AUD and SUD (56.7% and 64.5%, respectively). Including a single AUD question in the initial question set improved the tool's performance in identifying AUD and SUD (sensitivity > 70%), while maintaining brevity, face-validity, and simplicity in the South African setting.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.