Psychometric studies of brief screening tools for multiple mental disorders

Objective Conduct a systematic literature review about psychometric characteristics of brief tools used for screening multiple mental disorders in primary health care. Methods Systematic literature review on PubMed, Lilacs, SciELO and ISI databases until April 2014 using key words related to brief screening of multiple mental disorders in primary health care. Results Were obtained 277 articles; 15 articles were selected after considering inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eight articles assessed reliability and/or internal consistency and results showed satisfactory indices. In the selected articles, were present analyzes of predictive validity, concurrent and discriminant. Results ranged from moderate to good. Conclusion Screening scales are useful to identify patients with possible mental disorders and they increase chances of detecting such disorders in primary health care.