Assessment of psychometric properties of the Huaxi Emotional-distress Index questionnaire (HEI)in a large sample of general hospital inpatients

Objectives: Huaxi Emotional-distress Index questionnaire (HEI) is a 9-item questionnaire designed to measure psychological distress. The present study aimed to validate the factor structure of the HEI and its reliability and validity using a large sample from inpatients of West China Hospital. Methods: HEI data were collected from inpatients of various departments at West China Hospital in 2019 through the hospital's data management platform (total sample, N = 55,396). The internal consistency reliability of the HEI was examined. Exploratory factor analysis (N = 27,696) and confirmatory factor analysis(N = 27,700) were conducted to validate the construct validity. Results: Three factors, namely depression (DEP), anxiety (ANX), and suicidal risk (SR), were extracted through exploratory factor analysis, which accounted for 79.55% of the total variance.The results of confirmatory factor analysis supported the fit for the three-component model oblique model as the best-fitting model compared with one-component model and two-component model. The internal consistency of the HEI was & alpha; =0.918. The internal consistency & alpha; of ANX, DEP and SR is 0.87,0.814,0.843 respectively. Conclusions: HEI is a validated and concise tool that serves a dual purpose of screening for mood disorders and assessing depressive and anxiety symptoms as well as suicidal risk among inpatients in Chinese general hospitals.