Date created: 2021-10-21 02:34 PM | Last Updated: 2024-02-24 01:12 PM

Category: Project

Description: Multiple questionnaires are available for use by clinicians and researchers to assess both depression and anxiety. Recently, two of the greatest mental-health research funders worldwide - USA National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Wellcome Trust - established specific scales as pre-requisites to obtain funding, including Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7). Both scales consist of brief, self-rated and extensively validated questionnaires for measuring depression and anxiety, respectively. Similarly, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) presents a set of standardized instruments to assess psychopathology in two levels: level 1 scales work as a cross-cutting trial instrument and assess a broad spectra of symptoms, while level 2 scales address specific psychopathologic domains. Among level 2 instruments, there are Patient-Related Outcome Measurement Information Systems (PROMIS) for depression and anxiety, which consist of brief, self-rated and validated questionnaires for measuring common internalizing symptoms. However, the majority of scales for depression and anxiety - including PHQ-9, GAD-7 and PROMIS - only probe the frequency in which the respondents experience the disorders’ typical symptoms, starting questions with “How often…?”. The choice to frame the recurrence of symptoms may be traced to DSM-IV concepts of depression and anxiety, which fundamented the development of both PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scales. The multiple frequency, duration and timing diagnostic criteria posited by DSM and ICD manuals possibly artificially forged this questioning paradigm, although most part of it hasn't been formally tested. Thus, we aim to investigate whether including the assessment of symptoms characteristics in their context, duration, ability and bother in these well-established questionnaires better capture the information of the targeted constructs. First, we examined the capacity of each adverbial framing to capture symptomatology variance and correlate it with well-being and disability using a trifactor model framework. Second, we aim to quantify the informative effect of broadening mental health questioning scope, in order to determine whether any characteristic stands out in validity, reliability and clinical utility or all of them offer complementary value. Based on previous studies, we hypothesize that questioning symptoms as a matter of context and regulation ability will be valid, reliable and useful ways of framing mental health questions and they will be complementary forms of assessment, each of them capturing unique, not substitutive, information. We expect these results will improve the usefulness of well-established instruments and, thus, get implemented in routinely psychopathology assessment.