TY - JOUR
T1 - Standard Symptom Inventories for Asylum Seekers in a Psychiatric Hospital
T2 - Limited Utility Due to Poor Symptom Validity
AU - van der Heide, Douwe
AU - Boskovic, Irena
AU - Merckelbach, Harald
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - We examined symptom validity in two samples (Ns = 27 and 35) of asylum seekers who had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. Considerable proportions over-endorsed atypical symptoms (63 and 83%, respectively) and underperformed on a simple forced-choice task requiring the identification of basic emotions (41 and 71%, respectively). Over-endorsement and underperformance were unrelated to Dutch language proficiency but were related to raised scores on standard symptom inventories commonly used to assess psychiatric symptoms of asylum seekers. This pattern of findings casts doubts on attempts to monitor symptom severity and treatment progress in psychiatric asylum seekers without taking symptom validity into account.
AB - We examined symptom validity in two samples (Ns = 27 and 35) of asylum seekers who had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. Considerable proportions over-endorsed atypical symptoms (63 and 83%, respectively) and underperformed on a simple forced-choice task requiring the identification of basic emotions (41 and 71%, respectively). Over-endorsement and underperformance were unrelated to Dutch language proficiency but were related to raised scores on standard symptom inventories commonly used to assess psychiatric symptoms of asylum seekers. This pattern of findings casts doubts on attempts to monitor symptom severity and treatment progress in psychiatric asylum seekers without taking symptom validity into account.
KW - Refugees
KW - Asylum seekers
KW - Symptom validity tests
KW - Symptom over-reporting
KW - Underperformance
U2 - 10.1007/s12207-017-9302-x
DO - 10.1007/s12207-017-9302-x
M3 - Article
SN - 1938-971X
VL - 10
SP - 358
EP - 367
JO - PSYCHOLOGICAL INJURY & LAW
JF - PSYCHOLOGICAL INJURY & LAW
IS - 4
ER -