Measuring psychological pain: psychometric analysis of the Orbach and Mikulincer Mental Pain Scale

Abstract

Background Suicide is a public health concern, with an estimated 1 million individuals dying each year worldwide. Individual psychological pain is believed to be a contributing motivating factor. Therefore, establishing a psychometrically sound tool to adequately measure psychological pain is important. The Orbach and Mikulincer Mental Pain Scale (OMMP) has been proposed; however, previous psychometric analysis on the OMMP has not yielded a consistent scale structure, and the internal consistency of the subscales has not met recommended values. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the OMMP in a diverse sample. Methods A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the 9-factor, 44-item OMMP was conducted on the full sample (n = 1151). Because model fit indices were not met, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on a random subset of the data (n = 576) to identify a more parsimonious structure. The EFA structure was then tested in a covariance model in the remaining subset of participants (n = 575). Multigroup invariance testing was subsequently performed to examine psychometric properties of the refined scale. Results The CFA of the original 9-factor, 44-item OMMP did not meet recommended model fit recommendations. The EFA analysis results revealed a 3-factor, 9-item scale (i.e., OMMP-9). The covariance model of the OMMP-9 indicated further refinement was necessary. Multigroup invariance testing conducted on the final 3-factor, 8-item scale (i.e., OMMP-8) across mental health diagnoses, sex, injury status, age, activity level, and athlete classification met all criteria for invariance. Conclusions The 9-factor, 44-item OMMP does not meet recommended measurement criteria and should not be recommended for use in research and clinical practice in its current form. The refined OMMP-8 may be a more viable option to use; however, more research should be completed prior to adoption.

Validity and Reliability Study of the Turkish Version of the Orbach Mikulincer Mental Pain Scale-8 in a Clinical Population

“…Casanova et al did not evaluate OMMP-8 scale scores in predicting suicide risk and pointed to future studies. 12 In our study, the total score of the OMMP-8 scale successfully differentiated participants with and without suicide attempts in the depression group. The results suggest that the scale successfully predicts suicide risk, and its discrimination function is adequate.…”

“…Our study demonstrated that the Turkish version of the OMMP-8 scale fits the three-factor model well. The factors to which the items belong ( Figure 1 ) in our study are the same as Casanova et al Therefore, we named the factors in this study as Experience of Irreversibility (factor 1), Emotional Flooding (factor 2), and Narcissistic Wounds (factor 3) like Orbach et al and Casanova et al 12 , 13 Casanova et al found Cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.835 for “Experience of Irreversibility” subdimension, 0.856 for “Emotional Flooding”, and 0.767 for “Narcissistic Wounds” in the internal consistency analysis of the OMMP-8 scale. However, they reported that follow-up studies should support these data.…”

“…Casanova et al reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of 0.835 for the “Experience of Irreversibility” factor, 0.856 for “Emotional Flooding”, and 0.767 for “Narcissistic Wounds” during the internal consistency analysis of the OMMP-8 scale. 12 …”

Associations between the perception of dental pain and pain anxiety, mental pain, and dental anxiety in Iranian sample

“…In addition, Cronbach's alpha coefficient reported the subscales of this questionnaire between 0.75 and 0.95. 33,52 They said a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.97 for the whole questionnaire and between 0.62 and 0.95 for the subscales. In a study by Karami et al ( 2018), the 6-factor model (emptiness, emotional flooding, loss of control, irreversibility, social distancing, and self-estrangement) was confirmed.…”

How to measure mental pain: a systematic review assessing measures of mental pain

“…Our systematic review identified 10 measures of mental pain developed over the past 20 years, mainly for the purpose of predicting suicide and used mostly in the field of clinical psychology. Some scales, such as the OMMPS, have shorter versions that we did not review independently 37. The 10 measures identified vary substantially in their theoretical frameworks, definitions of mental pain, semantics and content (poor content overlap and weak to very weak similarity).…”