The Brief Symptom Inventory as an Outcome Measure for Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients

The utility of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) as an outcome measure for adolescent psychiatric inpatients was evaluated. The BSI was administered to 88 male and 100 female psychiatric inpatients at admission and discharge. There were statistically significant mean score changes from pretest to posttest on most BSI indices, with effect sizes ranging between small and medium. Statistical analyses produced generally equivalent results, whether T scores or raw scores were used as dependent variables. However, the ability of the BSI to detect pretest to posttest change reliably for individual patients was quite limited. The degree of symptom distress reported by adolescent inpatients, moreover, did not differ greatly from those found in normative data for adolescent non-patients. It is possible that this relative lack of discrimination between adolescent inpatients and non-patients may be associated with limitations inherent in using self-report inventories with adolescent populations.