Citation

Gibbons RD, Smith JD, Brown CH, Sajdak M, Tapia NJ, Kulik A, Epperson MW, Csernansky J. Psychiatr. Serv. 2019; ePub(ePub): appips201900038.

Affiliation

Center for Health Statistics, University of Chicago, Chicago (Gibbons); Department of Psychiatry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (Smith, Brown, Csernansky); Cook County Health and Hospital System, Chicago (Sajdak, Kulik); Chicago Beyond, Chicago (Tapia); Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago (Epperson).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychiatric Association)

DOI

10.1176/appi.ps.201900038

PMID

31337321

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to develop and validate a suite of dimensional measures of psychiatric syndromes for use in a criminal justice population.

METHODS: The previously validated Computerized Adaptive Test-Mental Health (CAT-MH) was administered to a sample of 475 defendants in the Cook County Bond Court. Item-level data were used to determine which test items exhibited differential item functioning in this population compared with the population used for the original calibration.

RESULTS: After removal of nine items that exhibited differential item functioning from the CAT-MH, correlations between scores based on the original calibration from a nonjustice-involved population and the newly computed scores based on a sample of bond court defendants showed a correlation coefficient of r=0.96 to r=0.99.

CONCLUSIONS: With a slight modification of the original CAT-MH, the tool was successfully used to measure severity of depression, anxiety, mania and/or hypomania, suicidality, and substance use disorder in an English- and Spanish-speaking criminal justice population.

Language: en

Keywords

Jails & prisons/mental health services, Assessment/psychiatric