Changes in patterns of mental illness over different hospital admissions

Different diagnostic groups were compared in order to find out how constant individual patterns of illness remained over different hospital admissions. First, each of the syndrome scales in the Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale and the Clinical Self-Rating Scales was examined to see how stable the patients' scores remained over two different admissions. Low correlations between scores on the two admissions were seen in the scales for mania and depression, reflecting changes in the clinical symptom patterns of patients with affective disorders. Many other scales, however, were fairly stable and were more closely connected with the given diagnosis. Secondly, each patient's pattern of illness on the first admission was compared with his or her pattern on the second admission. It was observed that patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizo-affective psychosis tended to have less stable patterns of illness.