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In low-resource settings, valid mental health screening tools for non-specialists can be used to identify patients with psychiatric disorders in need of critical mental health care. The Mental Wellness Tool-13 (mwTool-13) is a 13-item screener for identifying adults at risk for common mental disorders (CMDs) alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), substance-use disorders (SUD), severe mental disorders (SMDs), and suicide risk (SR). The mwTool-13 is administered in two steps, specifically, only those who endorse any of the initial three questions receive the remaining ten questions. We evaluated the performance of mwTool-13 in South Africa against a diagnostic gold standard. We recruited a targeted, gender-balanced sample of adults, aged =18 years at primary and tertiary healthcare facilities in Eastern Cape Province. Of the 1885 participants, the prevalence of CMD, AUD, SMD, SR, and SUD was 24.4%, 9.5%, 8.1%, 6.0%, and 1.6%, respectively. The mwTool-13 yielded high sensitivities for CMD, SMD, and SR, but suboptimal sensitivities for AUD and SUD (56.7% and 64.5%, respectively). Including a single AUD question in the initial question set improved the tool's performance in identifying AUD and SUD (sensitivity > 70%), while maintaining brevity, face-validity, and simplicity in the South African setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valid mental and substance use disorders and suicide risk screening tools are needed for community case finding of individuals who may not otherwise seek care. We evaluated the Proxy Mental Wellness Tool-3 (mwTool-3-proxy) a three-item screener that asks about the mental health of another adult, against a diagnostic gold standard in Mozambique and South Africa. The mwTool-3-proxy adapts the three items of the Mental Wellness Tool-3, developed in Mozambique using Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview diagnoses as the criterion standard, regression modeling and expert consultation to determine the best three items for identifying any mental disorder. The Mental Wellness Tool-3 has been validated in South Africa, Spain and the United States, and is being validated in three countries in the Asia-Pacific and Israel. Pairs of adults in South Africa and Mozambique at primary and tertiary healthcare facilities were separately screened with the mwTool-3-proxy and diagnosed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. We calculated the sensitivities and specificities for predicting any mental and/or substance use disorder and suicide risk among the proxy individual. We performed additional analyses restricted to respondents who were relatives of one another and who lived in the same household. The prevalence of any Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview-diagnosed disorder among the 229 pairs in both countries was 35.6% (38.5% in Mozambique; 32.9% in South Africa). The pooled sensitivity of the mwTool-3-proxy for identifying any disorder among the proxy individual was 73.01 (95%CI: 65.5-79.65) - 70.24 (95%CI: 59.27-79.73) in Mozambique and 80.00 (95%CI 69.17-88.35) in South Africa. The mwTool-3-proxy is a culturally-relevant, ultra-brief valid measure that can improve mental and substance use disorders and suicide risk case detection with strong sensitivity at the community and household level and offer a means to efficiently and feasibly collect clinical and population-level service needs data., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest Statement The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.