Successful five-item triage for the broad spectrum of mental disorders in pregnancy - A validation study

Background: Mental disorders are prevalent during pregnancy, affecting 10% of women worldwide. To improve triage of a broad spectrum of mental disorders, we investigated the decision impact validity of: 1) a short set of currently used psychiatric triage items, 2) this set with the inclusion of some more specific psychiatric items (intermediate set), 3) this new set with the addition of the 10-item Edinburgh Depression Scale (extended set), and 4) the final set with the addition of common psychosocial co-predictors (comprehensive set). Methods: This was a validation study including 330 urban pregnant women. Women completed a questionnaire including 20 psychiatric and 10 psychosocial items. Psychiatric diagnosis (gold standard) was obtained through Structured Clinical Interviews of DSM-IV axis I and II disorders (SCID-I and II). The outcome measure of our anal