Screening for Serious Mental Illness in the General Population with the K6 screening scale: Results from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative

By Ronald C. Kessler, J. G. Green, M. Gruber, N. Sampson, E. Bromet, Marius Cuitan, T. Furukawa, O. Gureje, H. Hinkov, Chi-yi Hu and 9 more. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 2010

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Data are reported on the background and performance of the K6 screening scale for serious mental illness (SMI) in the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) surveys. The K6 is a six‐item scale developed to provide a brief valid screen for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM‐IV) SMI based on the criteria in the US ADAMHA Reorganization Act. Although methodological studies have documented good K6 validity in a number of countries, optimal scoring rules have never been proposed. Such rules are presented here based on analysis of K6 data in nationally or regionally representative WMH surveys in 14 countries (combined N = 41,770 respondents). Twelve‐month prevalence of DSM‐IV SMI was assessed with the fully‐structured WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Nested logistic regression analysis was used to generate estimates of the predicted probability of SMI for each respondent from K6 scores, taking into consideration the possibility of variable concordance as a function of respondent age, gender, education, and country. Concordance, assessed by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, was generally substantial (median 0.83; range 0.76–0.89; inter‐quartile range 0.81–0.85). Based on this result, optimal scaling rules are presented for use by investigators working with the K6 scale in the countries studied. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/15b0264e588be069202f7c4207093bdab18a8c14

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Citations in the corpus

2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing: Methods and Key Findings (2009, methodology): “The interview consisted of demographic information and the Kessler 10 Psychological Distress Scale (K10) [10], included as an indicator of mental health status.”
Psychological effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on children and families in the UK (2020, background): “The items are summed to yield a total score of psychological distress which is classified as follows: ≤4 = No Impairment; 4<- <13: Moderate Illness; ≥13 = Serious Mental Illness (Kessler et al., 2003).”
The performance of the Japanese version of the K6 and K10 in the World Mental Health Survey Japan (2008, background): “The AUC was 0.85 for K10 and 0.86 for K6 (Kessler et al., 2003).”
The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA): rationale, objectives and methods (2008, methodology): “, 2003) with proven screening qualities for affective disorders (Furukawa et al., 2003; Kessler et al., 2003).”
Impact Findings from the Head Start Cares Demonstration: National Evaluation of Three Approaches to Improving Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Competence (2014, neutral): “Kessler et al. (2003). Domain Head Start CARES FACES 2009”
Stress, Marital Satisfaction, and Psychological Distress Among African Americans (2010, methodology): “Levels of psychological distress were measured using the K6, a six-item scale designed to assess nonspecific psychological distress, including symptoms of depression and anxiety in the past 30 days (Kessler et al., 2002; Kessler et al., 2003).”
The efficacy of internet-delivered treatment for generalized anxiety disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2015, result): “The current study was able to analyze the results of the Kessler-10 (K-10) measure (Kessler et al., 2003) from 4 studies and demonstrated a significant improvement (d = −0.91) in post-treatment distress in comparison to the waiting-list controls.”
Screening performance of K6/K10 and other screening instruments for mood and anxiety disorders in Japan (2011, result): “K6/K10 scales were translated into Japanese19 and the interview version was validated in the general population in Japan.19 The screening performance of K6/K10 scales in detecting 30-day DSM-IV mood and anxiety disorders was excellent with values as high as 0.94 for K6 and 0.94 for K10 in the areas ”
A comparison of mental health literacy, attitudes, and help-seeking intentions among domestic and international tertiary students (2019, background): “The Kessler-10 (K-10; Kessler et al., 2003) is a 10-item questionnaire that provides a global measure of psychological distress based on questions about the level of anxiety and depressive symptoms in the most recent four-week period.”