A Short Scale for the Assessment of Mental Health in the Community Aged

Abstract

Recent years have seen increase of interest in problems relating to the health of the aged. One of the major difficulties has been the practical problem of assessment, whether it be of physical, social or mental health. It is essential that any measures employed are appropriate to the aged population, should be easy and brief to administer, as well as being reliable and valid. Some advances have been made in tests of cognitive functioning developed or derived for use with the aged (Dixon, 1965; Britton and Savage, 1966). As yet, however, no simple psychometric test has been proposed for aiding the psychologist, psychiatrist, general practitioner, social scientist or those concerned with the care of the community aged in the early recognition of possible psychiatric abnormality. This report aims to remedy this omission to a certain extent. We have derived from an extensively used psychometric measure, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI, Hathaway and McKinley, 1951), a short scale of fifteen questions which has been shown to be a valid, easily usable measure of mental illness in the aged.

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