months before the beginning of Indonesia’s currency crisis, and again in 2000 (IFLS3). A 25% subsample of individuals was re-interviewed in 1998 (IFLS2+) in order to measure the immediate impacts of the crisis.<sup>4</sup> In addition to collecting extensive information on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of respondents and their families, IFLS assesses the psychological well-being of its respondents using an interview-based survey instrument. The measurement of psychological health in this way has a long history in the mental health research community and several survey tools, both for diagnostic and screening purposes, have been developed over the past decades. Some of these efforts have resulted in extensive diagnostic assessments such as the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) which use a battery of a small number of screener questions that feed into a more extensive subquestionnaire pertaining to specific psychological pathologies. An alternative assessment of psychological health through survey is the brief screening scale typically developed to assess population-level prevalence in non-specific psychological distress. One example of such a scale can be found in Kessler et al. (2002) who present a method for developing a new 10-question screening scale of psychological distress for the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).

While these survey tools have been developed to study the populations of developed countries, a recent WHO consortium (2000) using the CIDI has compiled a cross-national study of the prevalence and correlates of psychological disorder including samples from Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey. They find that the prevalence of disorders such as depression or anxiety is widespread throughout the world. While it is generally difficult to import these survey tools wholesale into a developing country setting, many researchers have translated and adapted the tools specifically for the local context. Recent locally-rooted studies in the developing world have found the prevalence of several psychological disorders to be as high as or higher than those found in the west. Almeida-Filho and others (1997) find the overall prevalence patterns by age and gender of DSM-III psychiatric diagnoses in 3 urban centers in Brazil to be similar to those found in the US Epidemiological Catchment Area studies (based on results cited in Robins and Regier, 1991). In rural Ethiopia the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity is quite high and similar to levels found in urbanized, developed countries (Awas et al. 1999). Using locally developed screening tools, Abas and Broadhead (1997) find a depression and anxiety prevalence of 31% among women living in a Harare slum – a higher prevalence than that found for the same demographic category in London. In general, developing country based studies find that the same covariates of psychological illness and psychological distress observed in developed countries – female gender, low income, older age, and lower

> 4 Considerable attention has been placed on minimizing attrition in IFLS.  In each re-survey, about 95% of households have been re-contacted, thus minimizing data concerns that can arise from selective attrition. Around 1015% of households moved from the location in which they were interviewed in the previous wave and concerted effort was made to track these households to their new location.  In addition, individuals who moved out of their original IFLS household have been followed.  This has added around 1,000 households to the sample in 1997 and about 3,000 households in 2000.

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