The National Survey on Drug Use and Health Mental Health Surveillance Study: calibration study design and field procedures

Abstract

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.

Employment Status of People With Mental Illness: National Survey Data From 2009 and 2010

“…Third, short-form diagnostic surveys commonly used in the NSDUH are limited in their ability to distinguish between individuals with moderate affective illness and individuals with serious mental illness (typically defined as psychotic disorders with at least 2 years of illness burden).Although steps were taken to validate these self-reported measures of illness (50, 51), self-report bias may have over or under estimated the prevalence of mild, moderate, or serious mental illness. Lack of information on date of illness onset significantly limited possible inferences (1).…”

“…In 2008, 1,506 adults were administered the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4 th edition (DSM-IV; SCID) via telephone by mental health clinicians. In years since, NSDUH reported four categories of mental illness severity based on parameter estimates from a model of scores on the clinician administered SCID as a function of the K6 and WHODAS scores (50, 51). …”

“…This study also included the following sociodemographic variables: age categories (18-25, 26-34, 35-49, 50-64), sex (female, male), race (White, Black, Hispanic, Other), educational attainment (less than high school, high school graduate, some college, college graduate or higher), marital status (never married, ever married), number of children less than 18 years of age in the household (zero, one, two, or at least three), number of times arrested and booked in the past year (none, once, twice or at least three times), and county type of residence (large metropolitan area, small metropolitan area, or nonmetropolitan area).…”

Correlates of Mental Health Service Use Among Young Adults With Mental Illness: Results From the National Survey on Drug Use and Health

“…The determination of mental illness and impairment level was based on analyses conducted on a subsample of NSDUH's adult respondents who were administered a clinical follow-up study (24,25). This subsample was administered a clinical psychiatric diagnostic interview (Structured Clinical Interview-DSM-IV-TR [SCID] Axis I) (26) in addition to the NSDUH survey.…”

Clinician-Identified Depression in Community Settings: Concordance with Structured-Interview Diagnoses

“…In a clinical reappraisal study involving 1,506 adult NSDUH 2008 participants [33,34,35], K6 and WHODAS were calibrated for predicting DSM-IV mental disorders (including past year mood, anxiety, psychotic, eating, impulse control, substance use and adjustment disorders) ascertained by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) [36] and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale [37,38]. Using a regression model based on this calibration study, probable mild (SCID diagnosis and GAF >59), moderate (SCID diagnosis and GAF = 51-59) and severe mental illness (SCID diagnosis and GAF <51) were identified by NSDUH investigators.…”