Validation of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) in French psychiatric and general populations.

The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) has been validated in general population samples in many countries. Interest in using this measure in clinical populations is growing, particularly for tertiary prevention and mental health promotion. This paper reports validation of the French WEMWBS in healthy and chronic remitted schizophrenia populations. The French WEMWBS was administered to 319 workers, 75 students and 121 patients. For non-patients, self-reported Trait- and State-Anxiety, Mindfulness, Positive and Negative Affect and the General Health Questionnaire were completed. For patients, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, Clinical Global Impression Severity Scale, Birchwood Insight Scale, Social Adjustment Scale, and Global Assessment of Functioning scale were completed. Test-retest reliability and responsiveness to intervention was assessed at 6 months. Whatever the sample, response frequencies showed normal distributions, and internal consistency was good (Cronbach's α). Scree plots of eigenvalues suggested a single factor in the samples. The one-dimensional solution yielded suboptimal fit indices. Construct validity was confirmed. Significant improvement in scores was observed before and after intervention. Test-retest variation was non-significant. Impairment of insight and cognition in the assessed patients implies that attention must be paid before applying WEMWBS to all patients. Nevertheless, WEMWBS proved valid and reliable in a further European population, suggesting transcultural validity for both monitoring and evaluation of interventions in healthy as well as chronic remitted schizophrenia populations.

Validation of a French version of the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory - short version: relationships between mindfulness and stress in an adult population.

BACKGROUND: Whereas interest in incorporating mindfulness into interventions in medicine is growing, data on the relationships of mindfulness to stress and coping in management is still scarce. This report first presents a French validation of the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory-short form (FMI) in a middle-aged working population. Secondly, it investigates the relationship between psychological adjustment and mindfulness. METHODS: Five hundred and six non-clinical middle-aged working individuals rated themselves on the self-report French version FMI and completed measures of psychological constructs potentially related to mindfulness levels. RESULTS: Results were comparable to results of the original short version. Internal consistency of the scale based on the one-factor solution was .74, and test-retest reliability was good. The one-dimensional solution as the alternative to the two-factor structure solution yielded suboptimal fit indices. Correlations also indicated that individuals scoring high on mindfulness are prone to stress tolerance, positive affects and higher self-efficacy. Furthermore, subjects with no reports of stressful events were higher on mindfulness. CONCLUSION: These data showed that mindfulness can be measured validly and reliably with the proposed French version of the FMI. The data also highlighted the relationship between mindfulness and stress in an adult population. Mindfulness appears to reduce negative appraisals of challenging or threatening events.