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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This study examined the psychometric properties of a brief, easily administered mental health screening instrument, the Outcome Questionnaire Short Form (OQ-10), for use in primary care. The OQ-10 provides information to the primary care provider about patient distress and well-being and highlights areas that may require additional exploration and/or intervention. METHODS: The OQ-10 was administered to 292 outpatients in a family practice clinic, along with a standardized measure of functional status and mental health, the Duke Health Profile (DUKE). RESULTS: The patients' mean age was 37.09 years, and 83% were Caucasian. OQ-10 scores were correlated with all subscales of the DUKE. A principal components analysis of the OQ-10 items revealed two factors: psychological well-being and psychological distress. Well-being was positively related to self-reported health, while distress was not. A subsequent specificity and sensitivity analysis was performed on the OQ-10 total score, and this provided preliminary evidence that the OQ-10 may be useful in gauging the psychological state of patients in primary care. CONCLUSIONS: The OQ-10 can be used as a brief screening tool for patient psychological distress in primary care. The OQ-10 items reflect distress and well-being, which may be useful to physicians in treating the range of psychological problems seen in primary care settings.

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OBJECTIVE: This analysis examines the role of alcohol consumption in success at quitting smoking. METHOD: Participants were 3,977 men and women in the Lung Health Study, a prospective investigation of the effect of smoking cessation and an inhaled bronchodilator on the airways of smokers with mild lung function impairment. Participants reporting more than 25 drinks per week, or 8 or more drinks per occasion once a month or more, or alcoholics who drank in the past year were excluded from the sample. RESULTS: There was no relationship between amount of alcohol consumed at baseline and smoking status after 1 year. Among both men and women receiving a smoking cessation intervention, those who drank eight or more drinks per occasion (binge drinkers) were more likely to be current smokers after 1 year, and to smoke more cigarettes per day than those without a history of binge drinking. These relationships were largely absent among control participants. Participants who identified themselves as former or recovering alcoholics at baseline did not differ from the other participants in their smoking behavior after 1 year. When volume of drinking and drinking of eight or more drinks per occasion were compared in polychotomous ordinal logistic regressions, only binge drinking predicted failure at smoking cessation. CONCLUSIONS: Binge but not volume of drinking was related to failure in attempts to quit smoking. The common factor may be that binge drinking and relapse to smoking both represent loss of control.

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BACKGROUND: The design and results of the initial intervention program of the Lung Health Study are presented for 3,923 male and female participants. One of the major aims of this clinical trial was to achieve smoking cessation early in the study and to provide intensive follow-up procedures for maintaining abstinence. In addition, compliance with use of aerosolized inhalers (either placebo or active bronchodilator) would be necessary in order to achieve the trial goal of improved pulmonary function. RESULTS: Eighty-eight percent of the special intervention participants attended the 4-month follow-up visit. Forty-six percent reported not smoking from quit day through the visit, and an additional 13% had stopped smoking at the end of 4 months, although they had not achieved abstinence since quit day. The aerosol inhaler compliance was self-reported at 81% at the 4-month visit. Validating the self-reports by weighing canisters reduced the "good" compliance rates to 66%. CONCLUSIONS: The intensive behavioral program was effective in achieving high initial rates of smoking cessation and inhaler compliance. Use of nicotine gum appeared to be an effective adjunct to the multicomponent behavioral program. Smoking status does appear to be related to inhaler compliance among both men and women participants.

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This article reports principal components and factor analyses of the scores of 60 high school and college students on the seven measures developed by Feifel and his colleagues to assess fear of death at the conscious, imagery, and nonconscious levels. The results did not support the presence of the three predicted levels. The best solution seemed to be the four-component or four-factor solution. The first factor seemed to be a measure of conscious death fear. The other three factors were determined by combinations of the nonconscious measures, suggesting that these measures are assessing different aspects of the subjects' behavior relative to death.

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