Standardized assessment of the needs for care in a cohort of patients with schizophrenic psychoses

There is a well-established tradition in standardized evaluation of the symptomatology and the social performance of psychiatric patients (Wing et al. 1974; WHO, 1983 b ; Platt, 1983) together with instruments for describing the pattern of contacts with services, like Psychiatric Case Registers (Wing & Hailey, 1972; ten Horn et al. 1986). Interest in a systematic assessment procedure for recording which action should be taken by services in the presence of a problem is more recent. Instruments for these evaluations are still experimental.