Indexing psychological distress in people with an intellectual disability:Use of the Symptom Checklist-90-R

The development, usage and clinical utility of psychometric tests for the a ssessment of mental health problems experienced by people with an intellect ual disability has only recently become a clinical issue and subject of met hodological debate. In general there are a paucity of measures, little cons ideration for reliability/validity issues and lack of intellectual disabili ty group norms. In this paper we describe the application of the Symptom Ch ecklist (SCL-90-R) with people with intellectual disabilities. Results sugg est that the measure has high reliability and validity with this population and that the SCL-90-R effectively indexes mental health concerns. Signific ant differences were observed across symptom dimensions and global indices between community and clinical groups. Preliminary nouns on the SCL-90-R fo r intellectually disabled people are provided. The data are discussed in te rms of the potential for the SCL-90-R to be used as an outcome measure for intellectually disabled people with mental health problems regardless of th e mode of intervention. Guidance is provided for applying the measure with intellectually disabled individuals.