BACKGROUND: The Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with Developmental Disabilities Checklist (PAS-ADD Checklist) is a screening instrument designed to help carers recognize likely mental health problems in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). To date there are no published PAS-ADD Checklist data on a large nonpsychiatric population of adults with ID, an important step towards developing norms for comparative purposes. METHODS: Informants who had known participants for a median 24 months completed the PAS-ADD Checklist on 1155 adults with ID living in community, residential care and hospital settings in a county district in the North-east of England. RESULTS: Normative data were obtained for the PAS-ADD Checklist for the study population with reference to gender, age, and type of residence. The overall prevalence of mental health problems was 20.1%, and the rates for affective/neurotic, organic and psychotic disorders were 14%, 3.9%, and 10.2%, respectively. Significant differences in the rates for particular disorders were found across gender, age and, residence type. CONCLUSIONS: The rates of mental disorders found in the study population were consistent with previous studies of general populations of people with ID using over-inclusive screening instruments. The PAS-ADD Checklist appears to be an easy-to-use and sensitive tool for identifying mental health cases in ID populations, but further investigation is required concerning the specificity of the instrument.
BACKGROUND: The Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with Developmental Disabilities Checklist (PAS-ADD Checklist) is a screening instrument designed to help carers recognize likely mental health problems in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). To date there are no published PAS-ADD Checklist data on a large nonpsychiatric population of adults with ID, an important step towards developing norms for comparative purposes. METHODS: Informants who had known participants for a median 24 months completed the PAS-ADD Checklist on 1155 adults with ID living in community, residential care and hospital settings in a county district in the North-east of England. RESULTS: Normative data were obtained for the PAS-ADD Checklist for the study population with reference to gender, age, and type of residence. The overall prevalence of mental health problems was 20.1%, and the rates for affective/neurotic, organic and psychotic disorders were 14%, 3.9%, and 10.2%, respectively. Significant differences in the rates for particular disorders were found across gender, age and, residence type. CONCLUSIONS: The rates of mental disorders found in the study population were consistent with previous studies of general populations of people with ID using over-inclusive screening instruments. The PAS-ADD Checklist appears to be an easy-to-use and sensitive tool for identifying mental health cases in ID populations, but further investigation is required concerning the specificity of the instrument.
Authors: Andrea Koch; Anke Vogel; Marco Holzmann; Andrea Pfennig; Hans Joachim Salize; Bernd Puschner; Matthias Schützwohl Journal: BMJ Open Date: 2014-05-20 Impact factor: 2.692