title: A review of instruments for measuring functional recovery in those diagnosed with psychosis.
abstract: The task of judging an individual's functional recovery is not an easy one for healthcare professionals. Indeed, increasing one's accuracy in predicting one's ability to self-maintain would be of great value for determining if functional recovery has or is occurring. The purpose of this review is to examine existing measures for assessing remission/normalization of functional status among people with psychosis. Our review evaluates 8 measures of functional ability encompassing self-report, clinical, and performance-based measures. We elected to utilize a grading system to aid readers in understanding the merit of a scale for use in assessing functional recovery. In this approach, a letter grade (A, B, or C) was assigned to each of 4 domains we deemed important to professionals in electing to use specific assessments: (1) Ease of Administration, (2) Reliability, (3) Validity/Relationship to Real-World Outcomes, and (4) Sensitivity to Change/Use in Clinical Trials. Results indicated that no "gold standard" measure has been developed to date, but performance-based measures appear to have the most evidence for predicting concurrent self-maintenance abilities (eg, residing independently or maintaining work). More research on existing measures is needed, and greater funding for developing new measures of functional recovery is strongly recommended.
authors.affiliation: bmausbach@ucsd.edu
authors.forename: Brent T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Mausbach
authors.forename: Raeanne
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bowie
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cardenas
authors.forename: Thomas L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Patterson
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D004651:Employment; D006304:Health Status; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011379:Prognosis; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012917:Social Adjustment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires