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American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 154, No. 10 : 891-894
Copyright © 2001 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health

PRACTICE OF EPIDEMIOLOGY

Prevalence of Serious Psychiatric Morbidity in Attenders and Nonattenders to a Health Survey of a General Population

The Tromsø Health Study

Vidje Hansen, Bjarne K. Jacobsen and Egil Arnesen

From the Institute of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway.

The objective was to study the effect of serious psychiatric disorders on participation in a general health population study. This was done by linking the records of the Second Tromsø Health Study to the case register of a mental hospital. The participants in the Second Tromsø Health Study were 21,441 persons, the total population of men aged 20–54 and women aged 20–49 years who resided in Tromsø, Norway, in 1979. The authors found that both men and women with psychiatric illness had approximately 20% lower attendance rates. Nonattenders to the survey had 2.5 times higher prevalence of psychiatric disorders than did attenders of both sexes. Age, marital status, and various psychiatric diagnoses were all significant predictors of nonattendance. Nonattendance led to underestimation of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the population. The conclusion is that in general health studies, even those with high attendance rates, the estimates of prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the population are seriously affected by nonattendance. Prevalence ratios between groups of the population were not much affected by nonattendance.

epidemiologic methods; health surveys; morbidity; psychiatry

Abbreviations: ICD-9, International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision; PRR, prevalence rate ratio


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