Measurement of mental health in substance use disorder outpatients

Abstract

Few studies have examined mental health (MH) attributes of substance use disorder (SUD) patients. The present study examines the internal consistency, concurrent validity, and comparative level of MH attributes (i.e., optimism, life attitudes, spirituality/religiousness, social support, positive mood, hope, and vitality) in SUD patients compared to the instrument development group. The internal consistency of optimism, spirituality/religiousness, positive mood, hope, and vitality were similar in both groups. Some subscales of the social support and life attitude measures had lower internal consistency than was found for the original samples, although internal consistency of more global constructs were comparable. SUD patients had higher positive mood, spirituality/religiousness, and hope scores, while social support, life attitudes, and optimism scores were lower than in the original sample. Correlations between MH attributes and recent life problems of SUD patients generally supported the concurrent validity of the MH measures. Keywords Mental health measurement; SUD patients; psychometric propertiesPositive psychology is a greatly expanding field with increased numbers of positive attributes being considered, delineated, and researched (Lopez & Snyder, 2009). There is currently no fully agreed upon conceptual framework to describe the various dimensions of mental health (MH). One system that has begun to gain support was formulated by Keyes (2005Keyes ( , 2007 and includes three primary dimensions -emotional, psychological, and social. Keyes (2005Keyes ( , 2007Keyes ( , 2009 has argued that MH is a distinctive dimension from mental illness (MI) and in a confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) of MH and MI (Keyes, 2005) measures found them to be relatively independent dimensions. A recent study by our group (Alterman, Cacciola, Ivey, Coviello, Lynch, Dugosh, & Habing, submitted paper) in outpatients with substance use disorders (SUD), using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA, obtained findings consistent with this conclusion. Importantly, literature has shown that MH attributes such as © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved Corresponding author. Ph: 610 356 4955; Fax = 215 399 0987; Alterman@mail.trc.upenn.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. In the current study we assessed a number of attributes of MH in a relatively large group of inner city SUD outpatients shortly after their intake to treatment. These attributes included the 4 just described (i.e., optimism, life attitudes, social support, and positive mood), and 3 others -spiritual...

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