A Brief Inpatient Measure of Global Psychiatric Symptom Severity

Abstract

Adolescent psychiatry is experiencing a growing need for brief yet psychometrically robust outcome measures for inpatient settings. Outcome measures currently available present limitations to clinicians and patients alike in terms of their excessive length, time of completion, difficulty to score, and focus on specific clusters of symptoms. The present study sought to validate the Brief Symptom Measure-25 (BSM-25) as a brief and easily administered measure of global psychiatric symptom severity in adolescent inpatient samples. This study evaluated the results from 154 adolescent inpatients who completed several self-report measures at admission. The findings demonstrate that the instrument has good construct validity when compared with validated measures of psychological health and well-being, behavioral problems, and interpersonal distress. We also showed the sensitivity to change of the BSM-25 from admission to discharge, and we showed that this healthy change was paralleled in several measures (self-reports and clinician ratings), using data from 75 adolescent psychiatric inpatients who were assessed at admission and also at discharge. Although this is only the first step in the validation of this measure for an adolescent inpatient setting, the BSM-25 shows promise as a brief outcome measure of global psychiatric symptom severity while maintaining validity and instrument sensitivity.

Psychometric Properties of the Farsi Version of the Schwartz Outcome Scale

“…The SOS-10 score also revealed a significant negative correlation with psychiatric symptoms, hopelessness and interpersonal difficulties. These results are consistent with the findings of other studies (10,11,17,19). Explicitly, participants who suffered from more psychiatric symptoms and felt worthless and hopeless and had higher levels of interpersonal problems scored lower on psychological health (7,46).…”

“…Convergent and divergent validity of the Farsi version of the SOS-10 was similar to the findings of the relevant studies (7,10,11,19,44). The results showed a significant positive correlation with general life satisfaction, healthrelated quality of life, and Ryff's Psychological Well-Being.…”

“…The validity of this scale was measured by using many other psychological measures. Overall, the results show that SOS-10 is a valid and reliable scale for adults and adolescents (10,11,19,30,31).…”

“…However, nowadays health care services focus on promoting well-being and making an important distinction between mental health and mental disorder to demonstrate that the polar opposite of mental disorders is not the absence of symptoms but well-being (7,8). Although changes in well-being and psychological health are among the most important treatment goals for inpatients and outpatients, there are a few measures for this purpose, which are too lengthy and time-consuming or based on a theoretical stance (9,10).…”

“…This scale has been translated into several languages such as French (6), Czech (15), Spanish (16), and Arabic (17), indicating that the use of SOS-10 has been extended since its development. Psychometric analysis of this scale has demonstrated good reliability and validity in both clinical and nonclinical settings among adults and adolescents (10,15,(18)(19)(20). Also, its psychometric features make it a noteworthy measure due to its generality, promptness and ease of administration and scoring (7,14,(21)(22)(23)(24).…”