Background: Few mental health screening tools have been validated with prisoners and existing tools, do not assess severity of need in line with contemporary stepped care service models. Aims: The current research aims to assess the CORE-10’s psychometric reliability, validity and predictive accuracy as a screening tool for common (primary care) and severe (secondary care) mental health problems in prisoners. Method: Cross –sectional study of 150 prisoners. All participants completed the CORE-10, Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview version 6.0 (MINI) and the GHQ-12. Eighty-one participants repeated the CORE-10 and GHQ-12 two weeks later to assess re-test reliability. Clinical judgment data concerning referral for primary or secondary mental health services in prison were retrieved for each participant. Correlational, ROC and confirmatory factor analysis were utilised to assess the psychometric properties of the CORE-10 in comparison to the MINI, GHQ-12 and clinical judgment. Results: Significant positive correlations were identified between the CORE-10 and all other measures of mental health. ROC analysis on the CORE-10 against the MINI 6.0 revealed significant areas under the curve for predicting both primary (AUC .85) and secondary care (AUC .76) level needs. At cut points of >6 for primary care and >10 for secondary care sensitivity was .88 and .83, with specificity of 64 and .61 respectively. Sensitivity and specificity of the CORE-10 was superior to current clinical judgment and the GHQ-12. Internal reliability (α .84-.89) was good and two-week re-test reliability (ICC=.83) moderate. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the CORE-10’s original six-factor model to be a good fit. Conclusions: The CORE-10 is an accurate screen for common and severe mental health problems in prisoners. The CORE-10 is a psychometrically robust tool for use with prisoners demonstrating convergent, discriminate and construct validity as well as good internal and retest reliability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:699340 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Lewis, Gwen |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/95008/ |
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