The Mental Health Surveillance Study (MHSS) is an ongoing initiative by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to develop and implement methods for measuring the prevalence of serious mental illness (SMI) among adults in the USA. The 2008 MHSS used data from clinical interviews administered to a sub-sample of respondents to calibrate mental health screening scale data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) for estimating the prevalence of SMI in the full NSDUH sample. The mental health scales included the K6 screening scale of psychological distress (administered to all respondents) along with two measures of functional impairment (each administered to a random half-sample of respondents): the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS) and the Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS). The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) was administered to a sub-sample of 1506 adult NSDUH respondents within 4 weeks of completing the NSDUH interview. Results indicate that while SMI prediction accuracy of the K6 is improved by adding either the WHODAS or the SDS to the prediction equation, the models with the WHODAS are more robust. The results of the calibration study and methods used to derive prevalence estimates of SMI are presented.

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The performance of kriging methods in predicting maximum m-day (m = 1, 7, 14, or 30) rolling averages of atrazine concentrations in 42 site-years of Midwest Corn Belt watersheds under two systematic sampling designs (sampling every 7 or 14 d) was examined. Daily atrazine monitoring data obtained from the Atrazine Ecological Monitoring Program in the Corn Belt region (2009-2014) were used in the evaluation. Both ordinary and universal kriging methods were considered, with the covariate for universal kriging derived from the deterministic Pesticide Root Zone Model (PRZM). For the maximum 1-d rolling averages, prediction did not differ among methods. For rolling averages of longer duration (m > 1), predictions obtained by linear interpolation on a logarithmic scale were better (up to 15% lower for 7-d sampling and 22% lower for 14-d sampling in terms of the relative root mean squared prediction error) than those obtained by linear interpolation on the original linear scale and also less variable. For kriging methods, empirical semivariograms of daily atrazine time series suggest a negligible noise process, supported by replicate analysis of selected field samples; piecewise linear semivariogram models were found to perform best for predicting sampled data. We demonstrate that kriging prediction intervals offer close to nominal coverage for unsampled values.

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The Mental Health Surveillance Study (MHSS) is an ongoing initiative by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to monitor the prevalence of serious mental illness (SMI) among adults in the USA. In 2008, the MHSS used data from clinical interviews to calibrate mental health data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) for estimating the prevalence of SMI based on the full NSDUH sample. The clinical interview used was the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM-IV; SCID). NSDUH interviews were administered via audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) to a nationally representative sample of the population aged 12 years or older. A total of 46,180 NSDUH interviews were completed with adults aged 18 years or older in 2008. The SCID was administered by mental health clinicians to a sub-sample of 1506 adults via telephone. This paper describes the MHSS calibration study procedures, including information on sample selection, instrumentation, follow-up, data quality protocols, and management of distressed respondents.