The Mental Health Surveillance Study (MHSS) clinical follow-up was conducted as part of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from 2008 to 2012 for the primary purpose of developing models that estimate the prevalence of serious mental illness (SMI) and any mental illness (AMI) in the adult (18 or older) U.S. population (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality [CBHSQ], 2014). In each of these years, the MHSS clinical study consisted of a subsample of eligible adults selected from the main NSDUH study for follow-up clinical interviews. A prediction model was developed that included SMI status (collected in the clinical interview) as the dependent variable. The predictor variables were variables such as psychological distress and impairment measures that were collected in the main NSDUH questionnaire for adults. The resulting prediction model developed from the MHSS clinical data was then applied to all adult NSDUH respondents to obtain the predicted probability of SMI for each respondent.
