General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)

Purpose: To screen for non-psychotic psychiatric disorders

Age: 18+ years

Time: 3-8 minutes

Administration: Individual and group

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a self-administered screening device for identifying minor psychiatric disorders in the general population and within community or non-psychiatric clinical settings (such as primary care or general medical out-patients).

The GHQ assesses the respondent’s current state and asks if that differs from his or her usual state. It is therefore sensitive to short-term psychiatric disorders but not to the long-standing attributes of the respondent.

The GHQ focuses on two major areas:

1. Inability to carry out normal functions
2. The appearance of new and distressing phenomena.

The GHQ–60 is the full length (60-item) questionnaire. The GHQ-30 (short form without items relating to physical illness), GHQ-28 (scaled version that assesses somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression) and GHQ-12 (short form ideal for research studies) are available on demand only.