Serious Psychological Distress T he serious psychological distress scale (K6) is a six-item scale developed to measure serious mental illness. The K6 was asked of adults 18 years of age and older. The answers were self-reported and no proxies were allowed. The K6 is designed to identify persons with serious psychological distress using as few questions as possible. The six items included in the K6 are:During the past 30 days, how often did you feel so sad that
nothing could cheer you up? Possible answers are all of the time (4 points), most of the time (3 points), some of the time (2 points), a little of the time (1 point), and none of the time (0 points). To score the K6, the points are added together yielding a possible total of 0 to 24 points. A threshold of 13 or more is used to define serious mental illness. Persons answering ‘‘some of the time’’ to all six questions would not reach the threshold for serious mental illness, since to achieve a score of 13 they would need to answer ‘‘most of the time’’ to at least one item. SOURCE: Health, United States
This page last reviewed
January 11, 2007
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