The Detection of Psychiatric Illness by Questionnaire; A Technique for the Identification and Assessment of Non-Psychotic Psychiatric Illness.

Abstract

Summary: The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was designed to be a self-administered screening test aimed at detecting psychiatric disorders among respondents in community settings and non-psychiatric clinical settings, such as primary care or among general medical out-patients. The questionnaire was designed to be easy to administer, acceptable to respondents, fairly short, and objective in the sense that it did not require the person administering it to make subjective assessments about the respondent. It aimed at detecting those forms of psychiatric disorder which may have relevance to a patient's presence in a medical clinic, so that its focus must be on psychological components of ill-health