Comparison of Social Workers' and Psychiatrists' GAF Ratings

In Reply: Although Dr. Kopera's alternative explanations are based on an inaccurate belief that the training provided to the psychiatrists and social workers was very similar, we would like to thank him for his interesting comments and his contribution of three alternative explanations for our findings that further support the main conclusions of the study.

Our study demonstrated that after the hospital's psychologist provided adequate training to the hospital's social work staff in using a computer-based GAF report (1) to generate GAF scores for patients being discharged, those scores and GAF scores given to the same patients by psychiatrists on the basis of their clinical impressions did not differ significantly across diagnostic groups.

Furthermore, this high level of interrater reliability suggests that such training can increase the usefulness of GAF scores in improving interdisciplinary communication about the continuity of patient care in the community after discharge.