Mental Health Inventory: Sensitivity and Specificity of the Portuguese Version of the MHI-38 and MHI-5

Detection of mental distress cases is essential in clinical practice, especially in primary care. Screening instruments could be useful and effective tools to help identify them. This study sought to evaluate the utility and capability of the Mental Health Inventory (MHI)-38 and MHI-5 in identifying cases suffering from mental distress from those who do not. The validity and accuracy of these MHI versions were tested using as gold standards: two samples of adults, one with clinical complaints ( n = 33) and another without clinical complaints ( n = 31); and the scores in Scales of Psychological Well-Being and in a psychopathology inventory (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2). Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to define cutpoints, which is the Youden’s index for the optimization criteria. The data analysis indicated an optimal cutpoint of 7.19 for MHI-38 TOTAL and of 53 (recoded to a 0–100 scale) for MHI-5 TOTAL to differentiate clinical cases from those who are not. These results indicate cutpoint values similar to those of previous studies in the case of MHI-5 and provide useful reference values for MHI-38. The need to replicate this study with larger samples and with controlled clinical conditions and type of pathology is also discussed.