A simple interview-format screening measure for disaster mental health: an instrument newly developed after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan--the Screening Questionnaire for Disaster Mental Health (SQD)

Abstract

Psychological intervention after a large-scale disaster requires an efficient and practical measure. Using self-reporting scale imposes certain limitations, especially when dealing with the elderly. It is also required that non-experts in mental health should be able to use the screening device, so that it can be easily incorporated into any local level post-disaster health service. To satisfy such requirements, we developed a simple interview-format measure, the Screening Questionnaire for Disaster Mental Health (SQD), which screens for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. In this article, its validity and usefulness was analyzed. Data were obtained from 68 individuals living in reconstruction housing five years after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. Applying the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Major Depression Section (SCID) as gold standards, the areas under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curves (ROC-AUC) and stratum-specific likelihood ratios (SSLR) as statistical indices were calculated. The ROC-AUC was 0.91 (95%CI: 0.83-0.99) for diagnosing PTSD, and 0.94 (0.88-1.01) for diagnosing depression. Three strata for PTSD and 2 strata for depression were obtained, and SSLR for each stratum was 0.10 (95%CI: 0.02-0.45), 1.05 (0.37-3.00), 9.64 (3.77-24.69) for PTSD, and 0.3 (0.1-1.0), 7.8 (3.2-18.7) for depression. The results showed that this screening measure had good validity, especially for PTSD.