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Background: The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7) are self-report measures of major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder. The primary aim of this study was to test for differential item functioning (DIF) on the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 items based on age, sex (males and females), and country. Method: Data from nationally representative surveys in UK, Ireland, Spain, and Italy (combined N = 6,054) were used to fit confirmatory factor analytic and multiple-indictor multiple-causes models. Results: Spain and Italy had higher latent variable means than the UK and Ireland for both anxiety and depression, but there was no evidence for differential items functioning. Conclusions: The PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores were found to be unidimensional, reliable, and largely free of DIF in data from four large nationally representative samples of the general population in the UK, Ireland, Italy and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although there is abundant evidence about the impact of economic crises on depression and other mental health problems, little is known about the protective role of variables linked to positive functioning (i.e., psychological well-being).Methods: We analyzed data from Spain, one of the European countries most affected by the 2008-2013 economic recession, collected in Round 3 (R3, 2006) and Round 6 (R6, 2013) of the European Social Survey interviews. Both surveys included measures of psychological well-being, social well-being and depression. Both samples were nationally representative of the general population (R3: 1877 participants, 49.2% men; R6: 1889 participants, 48.9% men).Results: Data from the R6 survey showed that, compared to data gathered in R3 (i.e., before the onset of the recession) Spanish citizens showed significantly less life satisfaction (95% CIs 0.37-0.63), less personal optimism (95% CIs 0.03-0.15), less social optimism (95% CIs 0.75-0.85), and higher levels of depressive symptoms (95% CIs - 0.74 to - 0.19). Structural equation modeling revealed that protective factors for depression changed in both rounds. In R3 (2006), close relationships, social optimism and social trust were significant mediators between well-being and depression. However, social optimism and social trust were no longer significant in R6 (2013), whereas close relationships remained a partial mediator of the effects of psychological well-being on depression.Conclusions: Economic crises are associated with a significant increase in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, financial crises seem to have a corrosive impact on mental health by reducing the mediating effects of positive beliefs regarding the good nature of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation of homelessness in Spain and throughout all of Europe involves two specific challenges: (1) that a prepared, official definition of homeless is not at the disposal of researchers, and (2) that few well-controlled studies exist to contribute to the knowledge base in this area. These obstacles are being slowly overcome through sociological [1] and psychosocial [2, 3] studies that provide significant information on homelessness through the systematic gathering of data. In the present article, we synthesize the main data on this topic available in our country, first, by presenting preliminary results of a project investigating the sociodemographic characteristics of the homeless in Madrid [4] and, second, by examining the complex relationships among homelessness, mental health, and stressful life events. The data are directly related to homeless people in the city of Madrid, but we shall compare this information with results from studies in other European and North American cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]