Abstract

The aim of this study was to test whether adding assessment of functional impairment to symptoms of specific mental disorders would have any effect on estimated prevalence of mental disorders in a non-clinical sample of university students in Iceland. A self-report measure was designed to assess the subjective functional impairment of anxiety, depression and stress in students’ everyday life. Measures were administered on paper to 671 participants. We hypothesized that taking functional impairment into account would yield lower prevalence rates than using only specific symptoms measures. The results suggests that the addition of functional impairment measure lends a context to the results of the symptom-specific measures and can provide a more accurate estimation of mental health problems of university students than symptoms self-report measures alone.

摘要

本研究的目的是测试在冰岛大学生的非临床样本中，在特定精神障碍的症状中增加功能障碍评估是否会对精神障碍的估计患病率产生任何影响。设计了一项自我报告测量，以评估学生日常生活中焦虑、抑郁和压力的主观功能障碍。以书面形式对 671 名参与者进行了测量。我们假设与仅使用特定症状测量相比，考虑功能障碍会产生更低的患病率。