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The Inheritance of Neurotic Traits: A Twin Study of the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

J. P. R. Young
Affiliation:
The Maudsley Hospital, S.E.5
G. W. Fenton
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, S.E.5; The Maudsley Hospital, S.E.5
M. H. Lader
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council, Institute of Psychiatry, S.E.5

Extract

The Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire (M.H.Q.) is a self-rating scale designed to provide rapid quantification of common symptoms and traits relevant to the conventional clinical categories of psychoneurotic illness. The inventory comprises 48 brief questions for each of which two or three simple alternative answers are provided. By use of a standard key, the following six subtest scores are easily calculated: free-floating anxiety (FFA), phobic anxiety (PHO), somatic concomitants of anxiety (SOM), obsessional traits and symptoms (OBS), depression (DEP), and hysterical personality traits (HYS). In that the questionnaire provides an approximation to what would be expected at a clinical level from a diagnostic psychiatric interview, it has advantages over other questionnaires which incorporate essentially non-clinical constructs of personality functioning.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

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