Background: A two-year action project to establish the indicators for mental health monitoring in Europe started in 1999 under the sponsorship of the EC Health Monitoring Programme.

Aims: This paper reports the results of a pilot survey conducted to test the feasibility of the set of survey indicators proposed. The test phase of the implementation of the set of mental health indicators involved five of the Active Partners (France, Germany, Greece, Finland, and Norway) of the Mental Health Indicators Project.

Method: The sample consists of 2059 subjects, 923 men (44.8%) and 1136 (55.2%) women. The number of subjects interviewed in each country ranged between 378 (Norway) and 441 (France).

Results: The coverage of collected data was good. However, telephone interviews did not appear to be the method-of-choice for conducting surveys regarding mental health indicators in the future. The prevalence figures of major depression and risk of having a problem with alcohol are in agreement with the major European studies.

Conclusions: The set of indicators could be easily incorporated into general health surveys, as the interviews conducted were not time-consuming. The results supported the view that the citizens interviewed have found the survey easily acceptable.