An abridged psychological self-rating Questionnaire for screening of patients with temporomandibular disorders

Abstract

An Abridged Psychological Self-rating Questionnaire (APSQ) was taken fromthe Middlesex Hospital Scale and adapted to the Al-Ahsa colloquial Arabic language. The aim was to develop a simple yet valid screening tool for early detection of temporomandibular disorder (TMD) patients with psychological problems. It is well known that a considerable number of TMD patients are psychologically dysfunctional and have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and health care utilization. This case-control study was done on a systemic random sample of 72 TMD Saudi patients. All subjects were blindly rated on the APSQ during dental assessment, and each followed by a clinical psychiatric assessment consisting of a history and a systemic mental state examination. A cut-off point ranging from 11 to 13 was found acceptable in identifying positive subjects. The best cut-off point was found to be at 12. When using the recommended cut-off point, approximately 15.3% of the subjects were identified by the APSQ form as psychiatric patients as compared to 38.9% being identified by the clinical psychiatric assessment. The sensitivity ranged from 72.7 to 90.48%and specificity ranged from 83.87 to 89.7 %. The commonest psychiatric disorder among the subjects was a mixed anxiety-depression disorder. The APSQ was found to be of good validity, thus supporting its usefulness as a screening tool for detecting psychiatric morbidity among TMD patients in the Al-Ahsa area.