Validity and Reliability of the Thai Mental Health Questionnaire in Psychiatric Patients in the Community

The Thai Mental Health Questionnaire (TMHQ) has been developed for assessing the effectiveness of mental health services. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity and reliability of the TMHQ in patients in contact with mental services. Subjects (age 12-74) came from out-patient and acute in-patient units in general practice. We obtained the opinions of experienced professionals, advocacy groups and patient groups to evaluate consensual and content validity. The results of this study showed that 1,205 patients were assessed using the TMHQ scale. Test-retest, Odd-even, and Cronbach's Alpha reliability were good for some items and poor for others. The TMHQ had good criterion validity: acute in-patients had higher scores than out-patients. TMHQ also had good concurrent validity, correlating well with other scales. Comments suggested the TMHQ was a useful and suitable scale for this population although social factors were not sufficiently covered.