Valutazione breve, multidimensionale e multiassiale dei pazienti dei servizi di salute mentale: Il SAVE

Objective: Development and validation of a brief self-administered questionnaire for patient evaluation in mental health services. Methods: The questionnaire was developed in 3 versions that came out from focus groups: for patients, for relatives and for mental health professionals. The various versions consist of 14 items with response scales from 3 to 8. The relatives and health professionals versions have 2 additional items. Test-retest and inter-rater reliability studies were performed 25 patients, 20 relatives and 29 mental health professionals with different roles. Internal consistency of each version was assessed. Results: Each version of the questionnaire took not more than fifteen minutes to be completed. Fair results were obtained in reliability studies: the values of the intra-class correlation coefficients were higher than 0.70 for most items, and not lower than 0.60 for all items except two, that were slightly modified post-study. The internal consistency of the various versions of the questionnaire was found to be high, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from 0.75 for the version for relatives to 0.91 for the version for patients. Discussion: The questionnaire is reliable and acceptable; it has good internal consistency. Because of its user-friendliness, it may be particularly suitable for routine outcome evaluation in mental health services.