CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 83Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentMental Health Treatment and AccessPsychology and Mental Health

GHQ increases among Scottish 15 year olds 1987–2006

Open access
Sweeting, Helen, Young, Robert, West, Patrick·2009·Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
DOI 10.1007/s00127-008-0462-6PMC PMC2693777
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Increases in a number of psychosocial disorders have been identified among Western youth in the second half of the Twentieth century. However findings are not consistent, trends are complex, and comparisons over time are hampered by methodological problems. METHODS: Data were drawn from three samples identical in respect of age (15 years), school year (final year of statutory schooling) and geographical location (the West of Scotland). Each sample was administered the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, a measure of self-report psychological distress, in 1987 (N = 505), 1999 (N = 2,196) and 2006 (N = 3,194). Analyses were conducted to examine changes in: GHQ 'caseness'; individual items; and factors, derived via confirmatory factor analysis representing (a) 'negative' and 'positive' items, and (b) 'anxiety and depression', 'loss of confidence or self-esteem' and 'anhedonia and social dysfunction'. RESULTS: Based on the standard (2/3) cut-off, 'caseness' rates in 1987, 1999 and 2006 were 12.7, 15.1 and 21.5% (males) and 18.8, 32.5 and 44.1% (females). Similar increases were observed with more stringent 'caseness' cut-offs. Examination of individual items showed some to have increased much more markedly over time than others. There were larger increases among females for all except two items and some evidence, among both genders, of steeper increases among 'negative' items compared with 'positive' ones. However, the differences in slope were very small compared with the overall increases in both types. CONCLUSIONS: Data from three samples identical in respect of age, school year and geographical location, show marked increases in GHQ-12 'caseness' among females between 1987 and 1999 and among both males and females between 1999 and 2006. Although slightly steeper increases in 'negative' items raise the possibility that endorsing such symptoms may have become more acceptable, these were small in comparison with increases in all dimensions of psychological distress. The next step is to identify causal explanations for the increases reported here.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s00127-008-0462-6

Cites

34 of 34 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Many studies from Sweden and other developed countries have shown increasing long-term trends in self-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms, particularly among young people.

    “many studies from Sweden and other developed countries have shown increasing long-term trends in self-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms, particularly among young people [5, 6, 12–16]”

    From Trends in psychiatric diagnoses, medications and psychological therapies in a large Swedish region: A population-based study (2020) · cites this paper as [16]

    The Conclusion (page unavailable) reports increasing self-reported psychological distress among Scottish 15-year-olds, and the Introduction describes increases in depressive symptoms in some other countries. But the Introduction also says the findings of comparable studies are mixed; this source does not establish the claim's broad pattern across many studies or provide evidence from Sweden. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 35 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [30]Rutter M, Smith DJ (eds) Psychosocial disorders in young people: time trends and their causes. Chichester: Wiley, 1995

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Sweeting, H., Young, R., & West, P.
Affiliations
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (GB)
Corresponding author
Sweeting, Helen
ORCID
Sweeting, Helen
Venue
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2008-11-26
Volume
44
Issue
7
Pages
579-586
ISSN
  • 0933-7954 (ISSN-L)
  • 1433-9285
DOI
10.1007/s00127-008-0462-6
PMC
PMC2693777
OpenAlex
W1991872611
Cited by
83
References
35
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 9
FWCI
4.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc
Locations
  • Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
Medical Research Council (WBS U.1300.00.007)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychology and Mental Health
Keywords
psychological distress, GHQ-12, adolescent mental health, temporal trends, sex differences, anxiety and depression, self-esteem, social dysfunction, anhedonia, psychosocial disorders
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Psychology, Adolescent, Educational Status, Health Status, Humans, Male, Predictive Value of Tests, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Surveys and Questionnaires, Scotland, Stress, Psychological, Cohort Studies, Sex Distribution

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review