Validation of the Kirundi versions of brief self-rating scales for common mental disorders among children in Burundi

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Paolo Feo¹  Peter Ventevogel²  Ivan H Komproe³  Mark J Jordans⁴  Joop TVM De Jong⁵ 

[1] Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Unit, Department of Neuroscience, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, IRCCS, Rome, Italy;Research and Development Department, HealthNet TPO, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Research and Development Department, HealthNet TPO, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands;Research and Development Department, HealthNet TPO, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK;University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA;Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa;

关键词: Burundi;    Validation;    Depression;    Posttraumatic stress disorder;    Screening;    Children;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-14-36

 received in 2013-10-12, accepted in 2014-02-05,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn Sub Saharan Africa, there has been limited research on instruments to identify specific mental disorders in children in conflict-affected settings. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of three self-report scales for child mental disorder in order to inform an emerging child mental health programme in post-conflict Burundi.MethodsTrained lay interviewers administered local language versions of three self-report scales, the Depression Self-Rating Scale (DSRS), the Child PSTD Symptom Scale (CPSS) and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-41), to a sample of 65 primary school children in Burundi. The test scores were compared with an external ‘gold standard’ criterion: the outcomes of a comprehensive semistructured clinical psychiatric interview for children according the DSM-IV criteria (the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children – K-SADS-PL).ResultsThe DSRS has an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.85 with a confidence interval (c.i.) of 0.73–0.97. With a cut-off point of 19, the sensitivity was 0.64, and the specificity was 0.88. For the CPSS, with a cut-off point of 26, the AUC was 0.78 (c.i.: 0.62–0.95) with a sensitivity of 0.71 and a specificity of 0.83. The AUC for the SCARED-41, with a cut-off point of 44, was 0.69 (c.i.: 0.54–0.84) with a sensitivity of 0.55 and a specificity of 0.90.ConclusionsThe DSRS and CPSS showed good utility in detecting depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder in Burundian children, but cut-off points had to be put considerably higher than in western norm populations. The psychometric properties of the SCARED-41 to identify anxiety disorders were less strong. The DSRS and CPSS have acceptable properties, and they could be used in clinical practice as part of a two-stage screening procedure in public mental health programmes in Burundi and in similar cultural and linguistic settings in the African Great Lakes region.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Ventevogel et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014