Abstract
Beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health issues have been prominent discussions worldwide. People are more aware of their mental health status as well as their loved ones. Besides having sound psychometric properties, a good instrument to measure mental health status accurately should be language-friendly. Hence, the 18-item Mental Health Inventory (MHI-18) was back-to-back translated into Malay Language and its reliability and validity properties were investigated. A total of 569 Malaysian adults (73.8% females), Mage = 21.73, SDage = 2.59 participated in an online survey during the pandemic. From the analysis, two items with low factor loadings were deleted. The remaining 16 items successfully loaded on two factors, namely Psychological Distress (CR = 0.89) and Psychological Well-being (CR = 0.90). The results supported convergent and discriminant validity. Thus, the Malay Language version of MHI with 16 items is a reliable and valid mental health instrument for the Malay-spoken adult population.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can make a contribution to his or her community” (World Health Organization, 2018)
Kumar and Nayar (2021) discussed the importance of providing psychosocial support and assistance for children who are miserably impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as they respond to stress in various ways
This study found that MHI-18 has sufficient internal consistency for total mental health score (α = 0.873), psychological distress (α = 0.887), and psychological well-Being (α = 0.897)
Summary
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can make a contribution to his or her community” (World Health Organization, 2018). Besides experiencing a lower quality of life, individuals from several countries had to bear higher levels of emotional distress and loneliness because of COVID-19 (Geirdal et al, 2021) and recently, people are becoming more aware of their mental health status, as well as their loved ones. Kumar and Nayar (2021) discussed the importance of providing psychosocial support and assistance for children who are miserably impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as they respond to stress in various ways. They require love and attention from older individuals during these tough times. Young individuals may benefit more by receiving mental health assistance through the online method as it provides anonymity, privacy and is easier to express and share their problems with those in a similar situation (Leijdesdorff et al, 2021)
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