Selección de ítems para el desarrollo de un instrumento de evaluación de severidad de trastornos mentales en pacientes sin psicosis o déficit cognitivo.

Objective: To select the most relevant items for the creation of a global evaluation instrument for psychiatric outpatients without psychosis or cognitive impairment. Methods: 313 psychiatric outpatients from Hospital Cayetano Heredia (Lima, Peru) completed 60 items taken from a variety of scales focused on measuring severity of symptoms, disability, and quality of life. At the same time, the severity of their mental symptoms was assessed through the Clinical Global Impressions Scale (CGI-S). The most relevant items were chosen based on each item´s factorial loads (FL) resulting from a polychoric factorial analysis and the polychoric correlations between each item and the CGI-S (CGIc). Results: The 11 most relevant items were: Global perception of quality of life (FL=0.7958, CGIc=-0.4275), Psychological/Emotional wellbeing (FL=0.7891, CGIc=-0.4057), Sadness (FL=0.7601, CGIc= -0.4613), Negative feelings (FL=0.7595, CGIc=-0.4269), Angst (FL=0.7501, CGIc=-0.4824), Freedom and physical safety (FL=0.7402, CGIc=-0.4011), Suicidality (FL=0.7147, CGIc=-0.4766), Life meaning (FL=0.6998, CGIc= -0.4161), Personal growth (FL=0.6987, CGIc=-0.4198), Spirituality and personal beliefs (FL=0.6936, CGIc= -0.3925), and Personal fulfillment (FL=0.6869, CGIc=-0.4073). Conclusion: The 11 selected items could constitute a short self-reporting instrument for the evaluation of mental illness.