[Standardized diagnosis of social adjustment. Assessment instruments for ambulatory and inpatient psychiatric care]

The diagnosis of social adjustment has been shown to be a fundamental tool for the planning of successful rehabilitation in patients with mental disorders treated in an out- and inpatient setting, for documentation of the course of the illness and the assessment of outcome. In the last few years, a number of different instruments have been devised. This paper presents the most current instruments: global assessment instruments, structured and semistructured interview questionnaires and observation instruments such as time-sampling checklists and rating scales. Depending on the scope of the assessment, there are specific instruments, some of them translated into German, to determine prognosis, degree of social impairment, available resources etc.