Mental health

Percentage share of persons aged 12 or older who score below 60 in the Mental Health Inventory (MHI) for adolescents ages 12 and over as well as adults. The figures are related to the Mental Health Inventory 5 (MHI-5). This is an international standard for a specific measurement of mental health, consisting of five questions. The MHI-5 is a scale of the Short Format 36 (SF-36), an extensive international standard for measuring health. It is included in the CBS Health survey. The MHI-5 includes questions related to how the respondent has felt over the past four weeks. The questions were
• 1. Have you felt an extreme anxiety?
• 2. Have you felt so down that nothing could cheer you up?
• 3. Have you felt calm and composed?
• 4. Have you felt downhearted and blue?
• 5. Have you been happy?
Each question comes with six answer categories as follows: all the time-most of the time-often-sometimes-seldom-never. To rate the answers to the positively formulated questions (3 and 5), the value scale applied was 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 respectively. The scale was in the opposite direction for the negatively formulated questions (1, 2 and 4). Subsequently, simple total scores were calculated and multiplied by 4, meaning the respondent’s score could range from a minimum total score of 0 (very unhealthy) to a maximum score of 100 (perfectly healthy). A score of 60 or above then qualified a respondent as mentally healthy and below 60 as mentally unhealthy.

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