OBJECTIVES: Many intervention based studies aiming to improve mental health do not include a multi-attribute utility instrument (MAUI) that produces quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). It limits the applicability of health economic analyses and means that the validity of comparability of cost-effectiveness between different interventions is diminished. The aim of this study is to assess the relationship between commonly used measures for psychological distress General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and MAUI EuroQoL (EQ-5D), and develop ‘crosswalk’ transformation algorithms between the measures. METHODS: The study is based on a postal survey questionnaire sent to a random sample of men and women in four counties in central part of Sweden, from 16 -84 years old in 2012. The study population included 32,500 respondents.  EQ-5D index was calculated using Swedish tariffs values. The survey included both GHQ12 and EQ-5D instruments, as well as questing about self-rated health. An OLS model was used to estimate EQ-5D health states values using GHQ-12 as exposure, using the respondents of two counties (n=17,000). The algorithm was applied to the respondents from another two counties, (n=15,500) to check the predictive capacity of the model. RESULTS: EQ-5D index scores decreased as the GHQ-12 scores increased. The final model included sex, age, self-rated health in 5 ordinal levels and GHQ-12 scores as a quantitative variable. The regression equation explained 40% of the variance. For estimation of utility scores, the model showed a satisfying predictive capacity between observed and predicted EQ-5D index score with Pearson correlation = 0.65, MAE (mean absolute error)= 0.12 and mean relative absolute error (MAE/mean(observed EQ-5D))=14.6%. CONCLUSIONS: The algorithms developed in this study can be used to determine cost-effectiveness of services or interventions that use GHQ12 as a primary outcome where utility measures are not collected.