Validity of the GHQ-30 in a Nigerian medical outpatient clinic.

Basic mental health vital statistics are scarce in developing countries. Scarcer still are validated psychological survey instruments which can be used in these settings. A method of dealing with such scarcity is through the validation of instruments developed elsewhere. One such instrument is Goldberg GHQ-30. The 30-item General Health Questionnaire was used by the authors as a screening instrument for emotional disorder in a general medical outpatient clinic. The GHQ-30 misclassified 32.3% of the respondents, a majority of whom were false-positives. There is a tendency for the misclassified respondents to suffer from chronic physical ailments, and to be older. The GHQ-30 appears not to have high specificity (65%) and sensitivity (73%). The predictive value (53.3%) of a positive finding by this screening instrument in this population is also low. Informed consent was obtained from participating subjects.