Short-term dynamic psychotherapy. V. Global assessment scale as an instrument for description and measurement of changes for 33 neurotic patients.

Global assessment scale (GAS) has not been tested out on a group of neurotic out-patients earlier. The patients in this study were selected for short-term dynamic psychotherapy by defined selection criteria and were thus a fairly homogeneous group of patients. It could be demonstrated that GAS could be used as a supplement for describing patient characteristics both at the start of treatment and at the 5-year follow-up. GAS could further be used for measuring change for this patient population after short-term dynamic psychotherapy. GAS could not be used as a predictor for dynamic change at the 5-year follow-up.