Adapting the Trauma History Questionnaire for use in a population of homeless people with severe mental illness in Tamil Nadu, India: qualitative study

BACKGROUND: The Trauma History Questionnaire (THQ) is one of the most widely used traumatic event inventories, but its lack of validation makes it unsuitable for the millions of homeless people with severe mental illness in India, who are particularly vulnerable to trauma exposure. AIMS: To translate and culturally adapt the THQ for use in a population of homeless people with severe mental illness in Tamil Nadu, India. METHOD: We used Herdman et al's model of cultural equivalence to conduct an in-depth qualitative assessment of the cultural validity of the THQ. Following several translations, conceptual, item, semantic and operational equivalence of the THQ was assessed through four focus groups with user-survivors (n = 20) and two focus groups with mental health professionals (n = 11). RESULTS: Several adaptations, including the addition of 18 items about relationships, homelessness and mental illness, were necessary to improve cultural validity. Three items, such as rape, were removed for reasons of irrelevance or cultural insensitivity. Items like ‘adultery’ and ‘mental illness’ were reworded to ‘extramarital affair’ and ‘mental health problem’, respectively, to capture the cultural nuances of the Tamil language. Findings revealed a divergence in views on tool acceptability between user-survivors, who felt empowered to voice their experiences, and mental health professionals, who were concerned for patient well-being. Providing a sense of pride and autonomy, user-survivors preferred self-administration, whereas mental health professionals preferred rater administration. CONCLUSIONS: Culture significantly affects what types of events are considered traumatic, highlighting the importance of cultural validation of instruments for use in novel populations and settings.