Psychiatric Distress and Suicidal Tendencies in Adult Cancer Survivors: Verifying the Validity of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 for Identifying Suicidal Ideation in the Hospitalized Population of Mainland China

The Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) is widely used to assess psychiatric distress but has not been verified in the Chinese population. From March to April 2019, 293 hospitalized cancer patients, aged 20–87, completed the cross-sectional survey with demographics questionnaire, BSI-18, and PHQ-9. We analyzed the single suicide-related item of PHQ-9 with the full score clinical outpoint for BSI-18 and PHQ-9 using SPSS 22.0 and R 2.15, including Pearson's χ 2 test and ROC curve analyses. A Pearson's χ 2 test was carried out to compare the three different methods with the gold screening criteria. The p -value was correspondingly to .006, .066, .838. When the PHQ-9 ≥ 10 criteria for the BSI-18, receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that AUC values were 0.839, optimal cut-off points for both BSI-18 ≥ 50, the sensitivity of 85.8%, and 62.5%, respectively. The BSI-18 is suitable for a screening tool for psychological distress and could also be used in clinical settings for preliminary screening of hospitalized cancer patients.