[Questionnaire for the evaluation of mental health in adolescence]

Procedures resorted to in building up a questionnaire for assessing adolescent's Mental Health are submitted. Questions were selected from DSM-III diagnosis categories and from Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) as well. The following variables were considered: socioeconomic characteristics, developmental level, and normal vs. psychopathologic criteria. The main results may be summarized as follows: a) Reliability and validity of data obtained allow the researchers to infere that this is an apt test for discriminating between normal and psychopathologic adolescents, b) Factorial analysis results confirm the constructional validity of the questionnaire, c) The most relevant variable was normal vs. psychopathological criteria even though the developmental level variable was also of significance. No significative differences were obtained in connection with socioeconomic level, d) As demonstrated in previous papers, psychopathology in adolescents is a mixed syndrome, and e) In similar questionnaires, adolescents got higher scores than adults.