[Detection of the anxio-depressive disorders in liaison psychiatry. Contribution of the General Health Questionnaire]

Abstract

Among self-report inventories of psychopathology for adults, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is one of the prominent instruments developed for the screening of minor psychiatric morbidity. Four versions of the GHQ were provided from the original 60 items (GHQ-30, 28, 20, 12) and three different scorings have been suggested. A large number of validity studies, mostly favourable, have been performed and are reviewed in this paper. Recent work has suggested that the sensitivity of the GHQ to clinical change was fair, compared to the Present State Examination. The most recent version, the GHQ-28, was built from factor analyses of the 60-item version and covered four dimensions, with seven items each: anxiety and insomnia, severe depression, social impairment, somatic complaints, but their subscores were not independent. Several international extensive studies have confirmed that the GHQ was an interesting tool in Community as well as in General Practice. But, as it falls short from detecting all the chronic cases, research aimed at improving its quality in this direction is still in progress. The use of the French version of the GHQ-28 is expected to be encouraged.