Mental health issues (MHI-5), in young adults aged 12 years or older

Mental health issues (MHI-5), in young adults aged 12 years or older

The share of young people aged 12 years and over and adults who score below 60 in the Mental Health Inventory (MHI). The figures are related to the Mental Health Inventory 5 (MHI-5). This is an international standard for a specific measurement of mental health, consisting of five questions. The MHI-5 is in fact a scale of the Short Format 36 or SF-36, an extensive international standard for measuring health. The MHI-5 includes questions related to how the respondent has felt over the past four weeks,

such as:

1. Have you felt an extreme anxiety?

2. Have you felt so down that nothing could cheer you up?

3. Have you felt calm and composed?

4. Have you felt downhearted and blue?

5. Have you been happy?

Each question comes with six answer categories as follows: all the time-most of the time-often-sometimes-seldom-never. To rate the answers to the positively formulated questions of the MHI questionnaire (3 and 5), the value scale applied was 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 respectively. The scale was in the opposite direction for the negatively formulated questions (1, 2 and 4). Subsequently, simple total scores were calculated and multiplied by 4, meaning the respondent’s score could range from a minimum total score of 0 (very unhealthy) to a maximum score of 100 (perfectly healthy). A score of 60 or more indicates that a respondent has no mental health problems, and a score of 60 or less indicates that a person does suffer from these issues. Until 2023, instead of 'mental health issues', the term ‘mentally unhealthy' was used.