Development of a graphic psychiatric self-rating scale

This report describes the development of a clinical instrument that is intended to assess general inpatient psychopathology among patients who cannot communicate directly with the clinician, either due to a language barrier or other problems with verbal communication. Reliability and validity of the instrument indicate that it can serve a useful purpose as a self-rating scale that obviates the need for extensive verbal communication. The scale also appears to be sensitive to changes in symptom intensity over time.