A brief scale to assess hospital doctors' attitudes toward collaborative care for mental health

Collaborative care may improve mental health management in hospital settings. However, no scales assess doctors' attitudes toward its 2 core components: mental health management by nonpsychiatric physicians and psychiatric consultation. Our objective was to develop and assess the reliability and validity of the Doctors' Attitudes Toward Collaborative Care for Mental Health (DACC-MH) Scale.

Fifteen items assessing doctors' attitudes toward management of mental health problems (10 items) and psychiatric consultation (5 items) were administered to 225 physicians and surgeons from a London hospital. Item responses were dichotomous (agree or disagree). Confirmatory factor analysis models were conducted using Mplus for dichotomous data to identify items for inclusion in the DACC-MH and to test the validity of the 2 hypothesized factors. Known-groups validity was tested by comparing scores of surgeons and physicians, as physicians have been shown to view mental health management and psychiatric consultation more favourably.

The 8-item DACC-MH included a 4-item Attitudes Toward Management of Mental Health Problems factor (Cronbach's a = 0.65) and a 4-item Attitudes Toward Psychiatric Consultation factor (alpha = 0.67; overall scale alpha = 0.70). Model fit was good (chi2 = 12.7, df = 11, P = 0.31; Comparative Fit Index = 0.99; Tucker-Lewis Index = 0.99; root mean square error of approximation = 0.03) with all factor loadings of 0.46 or greater. As hypothesized, physician scores were significantly higher than surgeon scores on both subscales, indicating more positive attitudes toward management of mental health problems and psychiatric consultation.

Preliminary evidence was found for the validity of the DACC-MH, which will facilitate efforts to evaluate readiness of doctors to engage in collaborative mental health care.