The construction of community indexes of mental health and social and mental well-being and their application to New York City

The paper provides a rationale and the development steps for construction o f community level measures of the "well-being" of persons with mental illne ss and the "social and mental well-being" of a community as a whole. Both i ndexes are based on a conceptual model that links mental health outcomes to domains of influence of socio-economic conditions, needs, and supports. Fa ctors are given that describe each domain and a method is suggested to sele ct and assign importance weights to indicators that describe the factors. A mathematical methodology is provided to combine the selected indicators in to a single index value. The aggregation rule is based on desirable princip les of an index, on aggregated domain values and on input/output ratios tha t link domains: needs to socio-economic conditions, supports to needs and o utcomes to supports. The application of the method to New York City is desc ribed. For each index, its values, domain values and input/output ratios ar e reported for 1991-1996 (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .