e-hub: e-mental Health Research & Development
CENTRE FOR MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH
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e-hub: e-mental Health Research & Development
CENTRE FOR MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH
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Improving Recognition of Mental HealthFrequently Asked Questions for Participants AimsImproving Recognition of Mental Health aims to discover whether there are new and better ways of identifying and describing a range of emotional problems experienced by people living in the community. We are surveying randomly selected people from the general population of the Sydney area.
Frequently Asked Questions for Participants
Why is the Australian Electoral Commission allowed to give out my contact information?This study has been judged to be medical research of value to the community, and consequently the AEC is permitted to provide us with your contact details. Refer to http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/About_Electoral_Roll/medical_research.htm or call 132326 (Australian Electoral Commission General Enquires) for more information. I haven’t told the Australian Electoral Commission my current location – how did you find me?The AEC finds out your current location from a variety of sources, including from rental agreements and phone and electricity records, so the AEC may have your current location listed even if you have not directly informed them of your address. Refer to http://www.aec.gov.au/FAQs/Electoral_Roll.htm or call 132326 for more details. I have had previous contact with a hospital or a mental health service and I think you have contacted me specifically, not randomly.We have not contacted anyone, including hospitals or doctors, to obtain information about people in this study. We have only used information from the AEC, who provided us with a random list of people living in the electoral districts of Mackellar and Warringah. Only names and addresses were provided – no other information. We are hoping to receive back questionnaires from people who have had all kinds of mental health experiences. I don't have any mental health problems, so why am I being given this survey?You have been selected randomly for the survey from the electoral register provided by the AEC. It is important for our study that we receive responses from a broad cross-section of the community, including people who have no mental health issues. How do I know the study is legitimate?You can read about this study online at http://ehub.anu.edu.au/research/mentalhealthid.php. Also feel free to call any of the project staff listed below to receive more information about the project. What if I don’t want to participate in the study?Participation in the study is entirely voluntary. If you are not interested in participating simply ignore the letter and questionnaire. Why should I participate in this study?We are conducting this study because we are hoping to develop better ways of measuring thoughts and feelings in the general population. Many people who suffer from mental illness are not diagnosed. If we can improve ways of measuring mental behaviour we can ensure that more people receive the help they need. How can I obtain information about the results of the study?Findings from the study will be posted on the study website, http://ehub.anu.edu.au/research/mentalhealthid.php, after the surveys are returned, telephone interviews are completed and the results are collated. If you do not have internet access and would like to be informed of study findings, please contact the project coordinator. Where can I go for help?We hope that this research will inform new ways to improve the mental heath of Australians. However, given that this research deals with emotional issues, some participants may want more information or want to talk to a health professional. Your GP might be the first person to contact, or you could contact a counsellor or psychologist. Alternatively, a number of resources outlined below might provide additional support: SANE Australia: Helpline 1800 187 263 www.sane.org BluePages: www.bluepages.anu.edu.au MoodGYM: moodgym.anu.edu.au Just Look database: www.justlook.org.au Feel free to also contact the researchers if you have any concerns about the study. Research Outcomes
The Improving Recognition of Mental Health study has now finished collecting surveys. The goal of the project was to test if new ways of asking about mental health issues were as good as the standard ways. We were interested in whether this new method would be able to identify people in the community who might be having problems with their mental healt The new method is called a "prototype", which is a brief vignette describing someone who has many of the symptoms of a mental health condition. For example, the prototype for depression is: "Jennifer feels sad most of the day, nearly every day. She has lost interest in doing most of the things she used to enjoy doing. Her weight has changed a lot recently, as have her sleeping patterns. Nearly every day she feels very tired and like she has no energy to do anything, but she can't sit still. She finds it really difficult to concentrate and has a lot of trouble making decisions. Most days she thinks that she is worthless. She has an overwhelming sense of guilt. She repeatedly thinks about death or even about suicide. Things have been like this for more than two weeks now. All of these feelings are so bad that Jennifer has trouble doing 'normal' things. She is really upset about the way she has been feeling lately." Respondents are asked to rate how much they are like "Jennifer" on a seven-point scale, from "Not at all like Jennifer" (1), through "Like Jennifer" (4), up to "Exactly like Jennifer". We also looked at the use of short-form prototypes, such as: "Karen feels empty and lost. The future looks bleak. She believes she'll never enjoy anything again. Recently, to what extent have you felt like Karen?" These are rated on a 5-point scale: Not at all (1), A little (2), Some (3), A fair bit (4), or, A lot (5). There were five prototypes included in the survey, representing five different mental health conditions: depression, generalised anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder and psychosis. We did not test the effectiveness of the psychosis prototype, but included it to see whether people in the community can differentiate between conditions. To see how well the other prototypes worked, we compared them to standard scales that have previously been tested and found to distinguish people who have these mental health conditions and people who do not. In the second part of the study, phone interviewers administered a short clinical interview with a subset of the survey respondents who were willing to be interviewed. The purpose of these interviews was to compare the prototypes and the standard scales to a clinical measurement, which is a higher standard that tells us how accurate the survey measures are. We expected people who reported high scores on the prototypes (i.e., people who felt a lot like the descriptions in the prototypes) to also report symptoms on the phone interviews and meet certain criteria. The results showed that some of the prototypes were more accurate than others. The generalised anxiety disorder prototype was the most accurate, performing as well as the scale on identifying people who met the clinical criteria. This means that people who rated themselves as being more like the person in the anxiety prototype were more likely to be experiencing problems with anxiety on an ongoing basis. The social phobia prototype also showed promise in identifying people who may have problems with social situations, although there were not many people who reported severe problems with social situations. There even fewer people who met clinical criteria for current problems with panic attacks, so we were unable to properly assess the panic prototype. While the depression prototype showed some promise in identifying people having problems with depression, it was not nearly as accurate as the existing screening scale. We tested both female and male versions of the prototypes, to see if the gender of the prototype had any impact on the responses. Overall, there was no difference in the rates of response to the different versions of the prototypes. However, for the social phobia prototype only, people were slightly more likely to report that they were more like the person in the prototype if they were the same gender as that person. We plan to continue testing the prototypes in new projects, and ultimately hope they can be developed as tools for screening for these mental health problems. We plan to test the prototypes further, both in the community and in the healthcare setting. Ultimately, we are aiming to implement the measures as screeners on mental health websites, as screeners for research, and potentially for screening patients in doctor's clinics and hospitals.
Project StaffPhilip Batterham, Project Coordinator, Tel. 02 6125 1031 Kathy Griffiths, Co-investigator, Tel. 02 6125 9723 Helen Christensen, Primary Investigator, Tel. 02 6125 8409
InterviewersRoss Calear |
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