Adequacy of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Distinguishing Lesser Forms of Psychopathology

The adequacy of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for distinguishing among lesser forms of psychopathology, as well as among the more serious forms, was investigated. 31 psychiatrists provided symptom descriptions for 13 clinical syndromes which were selected to span the full range of inpatient and outpatient psychopathology. The symptom descriptions included, in addition to the standard 18 scales of the rating scale, 24 additional symptom- and behavior-rating constructs. It was found that the syndrome patterns could be distinguished with high accuracy in terms of the 18 variables of the rating scale alone. The only distinction that was enhanced by consideration of additional scales was the obsessive-compulsive versus phobic syndrome distinction. On the basis of these results, it is concluded that the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale should be considered useful for description of psychopathology in outpatient settings even though most of the developmental work on the instrument was done in inpatient research.