Developing and Validating a Brief Jail Mental Health Screen for Women

From 2001-2004, researchers developed and tested a brief mental health screening instrument for jail detainees. This instrument was validated at a high level for male inmates, but showed less promising results for female jail inmates. This project intends to test the theory that including anxiety and mood disorder elements in mental health screen will increase the likelihood of successful identification of mentally ill female detainees. This project will study female jail inmates in 4 jurisdictions which identically match the sites used in the previous study to identify the mentally ill female.