Symptom severity and personal functioning among patients with schizophrenia discharged from long-term hospital care into the community.

Twenty recently deinstitutionalized residents of a 24-hour staffed community residential unit were assessed using measures of symptoms and functioning on two occasions one year apart. Overall inter-clinician agreements in ratings were good, but clinicians agreed more in their ratings of positive than of negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Levels of symptoms (measured with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) and functioning (measured with the Multnomah Community Ability Scale) were similar to those of comparable groups of patients, and were moderately related, sharing approximately 50% of variance. For the whole group, mean measures of symptoms and functioning were generally unchanged at one year, with retest measures of symptoms more stable than measures of functioning.