Fournier L, Lesage A D, Toupin J, Cyr M
Centre de recherche Philippe Pinel, Montreal, Quebec.
Can J Psychiatry. 1997 Sep;42(7):737-43. doi: 10.1177/070674379704200706.
Large-scale mental health surveys have provided invaluable information regarding the prevalence of specific mental disorders and service use for mental health reasons. Unfortunately, because vast surveys conducted face to face are very costly, many countries and provinces do not embark upon this path of research, thus depriving themselves of a rich source of data useful for service planning.
As an alternative, the authors undertook a telephone survey with a sample of 893 residents from a Montreal catchment area. Mental disorders were assessed by the Composite International Diagnostic Interview Simplified (CIDIS), an instrument especially designed to be used in mail or telephone surveys. Service utilization was measured by an instrument similar to those used in recent large Canadian or American surveys.
The prevalence rate for any mental disorder was lower in this study than in some large-scale epidemiological surveys reviewed. This could be explained by methodological differences, such as number of disorders covered and period of reference. With regard to specific mental disorders, results appeared very similar to those of other studies. Concerning service utilization, rates tended to be higher than in other studies, and this finding could reflect real differences between Quebec and other Canadian provinces or the United States.
Aside from being lower in cost, telephone surveys can yield results comparable to those obtained in large-scale epidemiological surveys conducted by means of face-to-face interviews.
大规模心理健康调查提供了关于特定精神障碍患病率以及因心理健康问题而使用服务情况的宝贵信息。遗憾的是，由于大规模面对面调查成本高昂，许多国家和省份并未走上这条研究道路，从而错失了一个对服务规划很有用的丰富数据来源。
作为一种替代方法，作者对来自蒙特利尔一个集水区的893名居民样本进行了电话调查。精神障碍通过简化版综合国际诊断访谈（CIDIS）进行评估，该工具专门设计用于邮寄或电话调查。服务利用情况通过一种与近期加拿大或美国大型调查中使用的工具类似的工具进行衡量。
本研究中任何精神障碍的患病率低于所回顾的一些大规模流行病学调查。这可以通过方法学差异来解释，例如所涵盖的障碍数量和参考期。关于特定精神障碍，结果与其他研究非常相似。关于服务利用情况，比率往往高于其他研究，这一发现可能反映了魁北克与加拿大其他省份或美国之间的实际差异。
除了成本较低外，电话调查能够得出与通过面对面访谈进行的大规模流行病学调查相当的结果。
