The British Journal of Psychiatry 150: 201-207 (1987)
© 1987 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
The Present State Examination Change Rating Scale
KH Tress, C Bellenis, JM Brownlow, G Livingston and JP Leff
Gordon Hospital, London.
The development and use of a new psychiatric symptom change scale based on
the Present State Examination (PSE)--the PSE Change Rating Scale--is
described. The advantages of the PSE are retained (the extensive glossary,
the diagnostic facility and the standardised interview technique) while
improving its sensitivity to change and decreasing its administration time.
The scale has been designed to prevent feedback of results and 'halo'
effects: it has proved highly reliable in use across raters with different
backgrounds and experience. The scale has been used to monitor drug effects
on clinical state across a variety of diagnoses and examples of its use are
given.