Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-gr6zb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T23:42:51.282Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The prevalence of minor psychiatric morbidity in the community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Robert A. Finlay-Jones  and
Peter W. Burvill
Robert A. Finlay-Jones
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, University of Western, Australia
Peter W. Burvill*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, University of Western, Australia
*
1Address for correspondence: Associate professor P.W. Burvill, University Department of Psychiatry, Scholl of Medicine, Victoria Square, Perth, Western Australia, 6000.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

The method is described of a point-prevalence survey of minor psychiatric morbidity among a sample of healthy community residents. The General Health Questionnaire was used as the sole means of case identification. The demographic characteristics of the sample were compared in detail with those of the total population. The factors mainly responsible for sample bias were difficulty with the English language, the varying degree of personal contact made with residents, and the difficulty in contacting the employed population during working hours. The overall response rate of the survey was 66·%. The demographic groups found to be at significantly higher risk for minor psychiatric morbidity included women, the young, non-British migrant women, and lower social class men.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , August 1977 , pp. 475 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bridges-Webb, C. (1973). The Traralgon health and illness survey: method, organisation, and comparison with other Australian surveys. International Journal of Epidemiology 2, 63–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Briscoe, C. W., Smith, J. B. & Robins, E. (1973). Divorce and psychiatric disease. Archives of General Psychiatry 29, 119–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broom, L., Lancaster Jones, F. & Zubrzycki, J. (1965). An occupational classification of the Australian work force. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 1 (Suppl.), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burvill, P. W. (1973). Immigration and mental disease. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 7, 155–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cannell, C. F. & Axelrod, M. (1956). The respondent reports on the interview. American Journal of Sociology 62, 177–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chester, R. (1971). Health and marriage breakdown: experience of a sample of divorced women. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 25, 231–235.Google ScholarPubMed
Cole, N. J., Branch, C. H. H. & Shaw, O. M. (1957). Mental illness. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry (Chicago) 77, 393–398.Google Scholar
Crandell, D. L. & Dohrenwend, B. P. (1967). Some relations among psychiatric symptoms, organic illness, and social class. American Journal of Psychiatry 123, 1527–1538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dohrenwend, B. P. & Dohrenwend, B. S. (1965). The problem of validity in field studies of psychological disorder. International Journal of Psychiatry 1, 585–605.Google ScholarPubMed
Dohrenwend, B. P. & Dohrenwend, B. S. (1969). Social Status and Psychological Disorder: A Causal Inquiry. John Wiley and Sons: New York.Google Scholar
Dohrenwend, B. S. & Dohrenwend, B. P. (1968). Sources of refusals in surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly 32, 74–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dube, K. C. (1968). Mental Disorder in Agra. Social Psychiatry 3, 139–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edgerton, J. W., Bentz, W. K. & Hollister, W. G. (1970). Demographic factors and responses to stress among rural people. American Journal of Public Health 60, 1065–1071.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, D. P. (1972). The Detection of Psychiatric Illness by Questionnaire, Institute of Psychiatry Maudsley Monographs, No. 21. Oxford University Press: London.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. P. & Blackwell, B. (1970). Psychiatric illness in general practice. A detailed study using a new method of case identification. British Medical Journal ii, 439–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruenberg, E. M. (1965). A review of ‘Mental health in the metropolis: the Midtown Manhattan Study’. International Journal of Psychiatry 1, 77–85.Google ScholarPubMed
Hagnell, O. (1959). Neuroses and other nervous disturbances in a population living in a rural area of southern Sweden, investigated in 1947 and 1957. Acta Psychiatrica et Neuro-logica, Scandinavica Suppl. 136, 214–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, E. H. & Shaw, G. K. (1965). Mental Health on a New Housing Estate. Oxford University Press: New York.Google Scholar
Hennessy, B. L., Bruen, W. J. & Cullen, J. (1973). The Canberra mental health survey: preliminary results. Medical Journal of Australia 1, 721–728.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, A. B. (1966). Principles of Medical Statistics. The Lancet Limited: London.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, A. B. & Redlich, F. C. (1958). Social Class and Mental Illness. John Wiley and Sons: New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krupinski, J, & Stoller, A. (1968). Occupational hierarchy of first admissions to the Victorian mental health department. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 4, 55–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krupinski, J. & Stoller, A. (1971). Health of the Metropolis. Health and Social Survey of a Melbourne Metropolitan Area. Heinemann: Melbourne.Google Scholar
Krupinski, J., Baikie, A. G., Stoller, A., Graves, J., O'Day, D. M. & Polke, P. (1967). A community health survey of Heyfield, Victoria. Medical Journal of Australia 1, 1204–1211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krupinski, J., Stoller, A. & Baikie, A. G. (1970). A Community Health Survey of the Rural Town of Heyfield, Victoria, Australia. Mental Health Authority, Special Publications No. 1, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Leighton, D. C., Harding, J. S., Macklin, D. B., MacMillan, A. M. & Leighton, A. H. (1963). The Character of Danger, vol. 3 of the Stirling Country Study of Psychiatric Disorder and Sociocultural Environment. Basic Books: New York.Google Scholar
Llewellyn-Thomas, E. (1960). The prevalence of psychiatric symptoms within an Island fishing village. The Canadian Medical Association Journal 83, 197–204.Google ScholarPubMed
Loewenstein, R., Colombotos, J. & Elinson, J. (1969). Interviews hardest-to-obtain in an urban health survey. In The Washington Heights Master Sample Survey. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Vol. xlvii, No. 1.Google Scholar
Manis, J. G., Brawer, M. U., Hunt, C. L. & Kercher, L. C. (1963). Validating a mental health scale. American Sociological Review 28, 108–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manis, J. G., Brawer, M. J., Hunt, C. L. & Kercher, L. C. (1964). Estimating the prevalence of mental illness. American Sociological Review 29, 84–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, F. M., Brotherston, J. H. F. & Chave, S. P. W. (1957). Incidence of neurosis in a new housing estate. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 11, 196–202.Google Scholar
Mechanic, D. A. (1970). Problems and prospects in psychiatric epidemiology. In Proceedings of the Aberdeen Symposium on Psychiatric Epidemiology (ed. Hare, E. H. and Wing, J. K.), pp. 1–26. Oxford University Press: London.Google Scholar
Meile, R. L. (1972). The 22-item index of psychophysiological disorder: psychological or organic symptoms? Social Science and Medicine 6, 125–135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mezey, A. G. (1960). Psychiatric aspects of human migrations. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 5 245–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moser, C. A. (1958). Survey Methods in Social Investigations. Heinemann: London.Google Scholar
Nathanson, C. A. (1975). Illness and the feminine role: a theoretical review. Social Science and Medicine 9, 57–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nie, N. H., Bent, D. H. & Hull, C. H. (1970). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. McGraw-Hill: New York.Google Scholar
Osborn, R. S. (1973). Social rank and self-health evaluation of older urban males. Social Science and Medicine 7, 209–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pasamanick, B., Roberts, D. W., Lemkau, P. V. & Krueger, D. E. (1957). A survey of mental disease in an urban population. I. Prevalence by age, sex, and severity of impairment. American Journal of Public Health 47, 923–929.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, D. L. (1966). The ‘true prevalence’ of mental illness in a New England State. Community Mental Health Journal 2, 35–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piotrowski, A., Henisz, J. & Gnat, T. (1968). Individual interview and clinical examination to determine prevalence of mental disorders.Proceedings of the 4th World Congress of Psychiatry (ed. Ibor, J. J. Lopez), Part 4, pp. 2477–2478.Google Scholar
Plunkett, R. & Gordon, J. (1960). Epidemiology and Mental Illness, Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, Monograph No. 6. Basic Books: New York.Google Scholar
Pomeroy, W. B. (1963). The reluctant respondent. Public Opinion Quarterly 27, 287–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renne, K. S. (1971). Health and marital experience in an urban population. Journal of Marriage and the Family 33, 338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, L. N. (1963). The reluctant respondent. Public Opinion Quarterly 27, 276–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepherd, M. (1960). The epidemiology of neurosis. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 5, 276–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srole, L., Langner, T. S., Michael, S. T., Opler, M. K. & Rennie, R. A. C. (1962). Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study, vol. 1. McGraw-Hill: New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srole, L., Langner, T. S., Michael, S. T., Opler, M. K. & Rennie, T. A. C. (1965). Mental health in the metropolis. International Journal of Psychiatry 1, 64–75.Google ScholarPubMed
Tauss, W. (1966). Internal checks in a sample survey. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 2, 50–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tauss, W. (1967). A note on the prevalence of mental disturbance. Australian Journal of Psychology 19, 121–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tousignant, M., Denis, G. & Lachapelle, R. (1974). Some considerations concerning the validity and use of the Health Opinion Survey. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 15, 241–252.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trussell, R. E., Elinson, J. & Levin, M. L. (1956). Comparisons of various methods of estimating the prevalence of chronic disease in a community – the Hunterdon County Study. American Journal of Public Health 46, 173–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar