The severity of psychiatric disorder

Evaluating the severity of psychiatric illness is important, but it involves many implicit hypotheses and models. To investigate empirically characteristics entering into judgments of severity, a representative sample of 217 patients hospitalized for the first time for functional psychiatric illness was studied. Results indicated that psychotic symptoms and bizarre disturbed behavior were more associated with severity than were depression, anxiety, and other nonpsychotic symptoms. There was a strong relationship between severity and psychotic/nonpsychotic dichotomy, but relatively little relationship between severity and diagnostic categories. Severity was also related to certain measures of chronicity and social function.