Abstract
A general personality and psychopathology evaluation is considered to be crucial part of the multidisciplinary assessment for weight-related problems. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) is commonly used to assess general psychopathology in both overweight and obese patients seeking weight-loss treatment. The main purpose of the present research was to investigate the psychometric properties of the brief form of the SCL-90-R (i.e., the SCL-K-9) in a clinical sample (N = 397) of patients seeking weight-loss treatment (i.e., bariatric surgery and a nutritional weight-loss program). The results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported a one-factor solution of the SCL-K-9, with all nine items loading significantly on the common latent factor (lambdas ≥ 0.587). The ordinal α (= 0.91), the inter-item mean indices of correlation (rii = 0.53), and the convergent validity were also satisfactory. A receiver operating characteristic curves procedure showed that both SCL-90-R and SCL-K-9 were able to classify patients with and without significant binge eating pathology according to the Binge Eating Scale (BES) total score. Overall, our results suggest that the SCL-K-9 has adequate psychometric properties and can be applied as a short screening tool to assess general psychopathology in overweight/obese individuals seeking weight-loss treatment and at follow-up interviews when time restraints preclude the use of the full-length form.
Highlights
Obesity (i.e., body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2 ) and overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 ) are serious prevalent health concerns [1] currently affecting over one-third of the world’s population [2]
Results of invariance across gender and age groups, satisfactory internal consistency, and strong associations with both somatic (r = 0.60) and depressive symptoms (r = 0.71) were reported [31]. These findings suggest that the SCL-K-9 is an adequate and valid assessment tool that can be used when time restraints preclude the use of the full-length form, such as in large epidemiological cohort surveys and at follow-up interviews [28,29,30,31,32]
The purposes of the current research were to propose an Italian adaptation of the SCL-K-9 and to explore its dimensionality and psychometric properties in a clinical sample of obese and overweight patients seeking weight-loss treatment. Another aim was to investigate whether, by using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve procedure, the SCL-K-9 could be able to categorize patients with and without significant binge eating pathology according to the Binge Eating Scale (BES) total score [33] compared to the original SCL-90-R
Summary
Obesity (i.e., body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2 ) and overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 ) are serious prevalent health concerns [1] currently affecting over one-third of the world’s population [2]. Weight-loss treatment-seeking individuals are often characterized by dysfunctional eating patterns, especially binge eating [5,6,7,8], as well as high rates of psychopathology, mood. Nutrients 2020, 12, 674 and anxiety disorders and body image concerns [6,9,10]. The association between psychopathology and the success of weight-loss treatments is controversial [6,13,14], it has often been reported [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22] that mental health issues (e.g., binge eating disorder) are associated with several aspects of treatment outcomes (e.g., less weight loss, weight regain, and higher drop-out rates). Binge eating disorder in bariatric surgery candidates may predict the development of problematic eating behaviors after surgery [23]
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