Establishing Chinese middle-school students’ mental-health norms with the Symptom Check List-90-R

• Yulan Yu

  Guangdong Medical University

• Xudong Zhao

  Tongji University

• Chonghua Wan

  Guangdong Medical University

• Chuanzhi Xu

  Kunming Medical University

• Lei Shang

  The Fourth Military Medical University

• Yuhong Yao

  Tongji University

• Shaojiang Miao

  Wuhan Hospital of Psychotherapy

• Ying Liu

  Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang

Despite the widespread application of the Symptom Check List-90-R (SCL-90-R) with Chinese middle-school students, there are currently no widely accepted national norms for mental health specifically for this group. In this study our aim was to establish mental-health norms for Chinese middle-school students using the Chinese version of the SCL-90-R. A large sample (N = 20,862) of Chinese middle-school students completed the SCL-90-R. Their mean scores for the 9 subscales of the SCL-90-R ranged from 1.45 to 1.85. The mean General Symptomatic Index score was 1.61 ± 0.57. There were significant differences between these norms and the norms reported in a Chinese study conducted in 1986. The scores we recorded in this study can be used as new mental-health norms for this age group because the data were acquired directly through a survey using a large sample representative of middle-school students in China.

1. Yulan Yu, Guangdong Medical University
   Department of Psychology/Research Center for Quality of Life and Applied Psychology
2. Xudong Zhao, Tongji University
   Institute of Psychosomatic Medicine, The East Translational Medicine Platform
3. Chonghua Wan, Guangdong Medical University

   School of Humanities and Management/Research Center for Quality of Life and Applied Psychology,

4. Chuanzhi Xu, Kunming Medical University
   School of Public Health
5. Lei Shang, The Fourth Military Medical University
   Department of Health Statistics
6. Yuhong Yao, Tongji University

   Institute of Psychosomatic Medicine, The East Translational Medicine Platform

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