Mental health and imprisonment: Measuring cross-cutting symptoms among convicts in Punjab, Pakistan.

Background: DSM-5 Self-Rated Level 1 Cross-Cutting Symptom Measure-Adult (APA, 2013) is a self-reported instrument to measure comorbidity of psychiatric symptomology. Translation and validation of this instrument contribute to the literature, both in terms of its availability in native language Urdu and its usefulness in the prison settings of Pakistan.

Aim: The purpose of the present study is to translate DSM-5 Self-Rated Level 1 Cross-Cutting Symptom Measure-Adult (APA, 2013) and to measure comorbid psychiatric symptomology among convicted criminals of Central Jail Bahawalpur (CJB) and Central Jail Sahiwal (CJS).

Materials and Method: Cross-sectional design was used and guideline proposed by Mapi Institute (Acquadro et al., 2012) was used for the translation and adaptation process. Data were collected from 362 imprisoned convicts.

Statistical Analysis: For construct validity, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was done by taking domains as continuous variables. The analysis was conducted using AMOS. Cross-tabulation analysis was conducted to see the association of comorbid psychiatric symptomology with respect to crime-related variables by using SPSS.

Results and Conclusion: Goodness of fit showed that the translated version of the instrument has a satisfactory to good construct validity. For domains with more than one items, Guttmann and Alpha reliability analysis showed satisfactory reliability of domains (.52-.71) and Alpha reliability of .89 for the overall instrument. Sleep disturbance and anger related symptoms showed a high prevalence in the current sample. Current and previous crime-related variables do associate significantly with comorbid psychiatric symptomology.

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