Background: People with psychiatric disabilities often find it difficult to maintain a satisfactory occupational balance.

Aims/objectives: This study aimed to investigate the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ11-T) in mental health.

Material and methods: OBQ11-T was applied to 149 people for construct validity analysis and to 61 of them for reliability analysis. Validity was determined using factor analyses. The reliability of the OBQ between the first and second evaluations was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for each item and the total OBQ11-T score. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha.

Results: The results of factor analysis revealed one factor that explains 35.94% of the total variance in the model. OBQ11-T item 1 had the lowest and OBQ11-T item 4 had the highest factor loadings. The model fits the data according to the indices of relative fit (RMSEA = 0.087, CMIN/DF = 2.129, CFI = 0.901). There was an excellent correlation between test and retest OBQ11-T total scores (ICC = 0.905). All items of the OBQ11-T showed good reliability. Cronbach’s alpha for the OBQ11-T total score was 0.839, indicating acceptable internal consistency.

Conclusions and significance: The current study showed that OBQ11-T is a valid and reliable tool for measuring the self-rated occupational balance of people with mental illness.