The Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS): objectives and design

Abstract

The article describes the objectives and design of a prospective study of the prevalence, incidence and course of psychiatric disorders in a representative sample of non-institutionalized Dutch adults. A total of 7146 men and women aged 18-64, contacted through a multistage sample of municipalities and households, were interviewed at home in 1996. The primary diagnostic instrument was the CIDI, which determines the lifetime occurrence of DSM-III-R disorders. The disorders included were: mood disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia and other non-affective psychotic disorders, and dependence and abuse of psychoactive substances. Follow-up measurements in the same sample were scheduled at 12 and 36 months. The net response to the first measurement was 69.7%. Poststratification weightings were applied for gender, age, marital status and degree of urbanization. Limitations and advantages of the study design are discussed. Findings are reported elsewhere in this issue.

Social phobia and number of social fears, and their association with comorbidity, health-related quality of life and help seeking

“…NEMESIS was based on a multistage, stratified, random sampling procedure [5]. Initially, a sample was drawn of 90 Dutch municipalities stratified on the basis of urbanization and adequate dispersion over the 12 provinces in the Netherlands.…”

“…Refusal was the most important reason for non-response. The sample reflected adequately the Dutch population in terms of gender, civil status and urbanization level [5]. The data was collected by 90 experienced interviewers.…”

“…The weighting procedures have been described in more detail elsewhere [5]. Furthermore, because earlier research has shown that several demographic variables are associated with social phobia, we adjusted for demographics in all analyses [8,11,16].…”

Psychotic experiences and incident suicidal ideation and behaviour: Disentangling the longitudinal associations from connected psychopathology

“…Both studies applied multistage, random sampling procedures of municipalities and households. Detailed information about the study characteristics was published elsewhere (Bijl et al, 1998;de Graaf et al, 2010). NEMESIS included 7076 participants aged 18-64 years (average age at baseline 41.2 years, SD=12.2) and consisted of two follow-up surveys, respectively one (T1) and three (T2) years after the baseline measurement (T0).…”

Course trajectories of unipolar depressive disorders identified by latent class growth analysis

“…Earliest age was used for those with co-morbid disorders. Childhood adversity was assessed using a structured interview from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS ; Bijl et al 1998), in which respondents were asked to retrospectively recall whether they had experienced emotional neglect, psychological abuse, physical abuse or sexual abuse before the age of 16 years. A childhood index was computed (range 0-4), as used previously (Wiersma et al 2009).…”