The use of selected questions from the Symptom-Sign Inventory with long-stay psychiatric patients.

The Symptom-Sign Inventory was administered to 57 long-stay psychiatric in-patients with the object of selecting a group of questions which would stimulate the production of delusional or other psychotic material. The scoring of the responses as positive was made on verbal affirmative and other specific behaviours which were thought to indicate emotional impact. It was found that the ten questions selected compared favourably with longer questionnaires in discriminating schizophrenic from normal subjects and from those with organic brain disease. It is suggested that these questions might be included in brief assessment interviews on which day-to-day management decisions are made.