Fig. 1

Items and scales of the SPHERE-34. Items’ short names are used through this manuscript. Some items may be included in several scales as indicated by multiple “x” in some rows. Items from the shorter SPHERE-12 appear in blue. Each scale of the SPHERE-12 comprises six items, which were created to provide a screening tool for common psychological and somatic distress in general practice [1, 85,86,87]. The two dimensional picture of the Australian population for the SPHERE-12 showed good psychometric properties and very high sensitivity for current and life-time major depression, anxiety and neurasthenia as assessed by DSM-III and DSM-IV [1, 86]. In addition, it was a good predictor of disability (as measured using the Brief Disability Questionnaire [88]), psychiatric morbidity [89] and doctor’s rating of psychological risk [1], which has led to its use in research and medical practice in Australia [97]