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Brief ReportFull Access

A Self-Administered Instrument to Measure Psychiatric Discomfort of Persons With Serious Mental Illness

Published Online:1 Jan 1999https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.1.107

Abstract

The author describes the development and evaluation of the Psychiatric Discomfort Scale, a self-report instrument that provides a quantitative measurement of patients' discomfort with psychiatric symptoms that change over time. Initially, a 60-item instrument was evaluated with 55 psychiatric inpatients in a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center and a comparison group of 71 medical outpatients in the VA system. It was revised and tested again with 292 outpatients in treatment for psychosis. The resulting 23-item instrument was found to be internally consistent and responsive to changes in a patient's condition over time.