RESUMO
On administering the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) in English, Gujarati and Marathi, to 500 non-acutely ill adult patients selected randomly from a General Hospital Out-patient Department, it was found that 57% scored high (12 and above), indicating the possibility of psychiatric morbidity in this group. On subjecting 50 of these patients to blind psychiatric evaluation a misclassification rate of 30% was observed with respect to the G. H. Q. 96% of the psychiatrically ill scored high on GHQ, 37% of those scoring high on G. H. Q. were psychiatrically normal. If this misclassification rate is lowered by suitable modifications such as reducing items pertaining to Group A of the G. H. Q., then this test will be very useful as a simple tool to detect psychiatric morbidity.
