Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
Structured clinical interviews are the gold standard for assessing mental health. However limited resources may allow the use of only self-report questionnaires. In the context of emergency, such as terrorist attacks, the performance and thresholds of such tools still unclear.
We investigated the performance of the Posttraumatic stress disorder CheckList Scale (PCL-S) and of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS), both compared to the MINI Interview, among civilians and first responders involved in terrorist attacks.
The data came from the IMPACTS survey which was conducted from 6-10 months among civilians (N=190) and first responders (N=232) after the January 2015 terrorist attacks in the Paris Region, France. Sensitivity and specificity of the PCL-S and HADS were estimated by the ROC curve, and the optimal threshold was defined using the Youden index.
Regarding the PCL-S: for civilians and first responders respectively, the overall AUC was 0.947 and 0.899, and the optimal threshold were 38.5 and 39.5. Regarding the HADS-D: for civilians and first responders respectively, the overall AUC was 0.908 and 0.617 and the optimal thresholds were 7.5 and 1.5. For the HADS-A for civilians and first responders respectively, the overall AUC was 0.823 and 0.717, the optimal threshold were 9.5 and 6.5.
In the context of a terrorist attack, compared to the MINI, our study underlined satisfactory performance of the PCL-S and the HADS-D in screening for PTSD and depression respectively, while the screening of anxiety using the HADS-A was unsatisfactory.
No significant relationships.
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