Radical Openness Programme Outcome Measures

• Brief symptom Inventory

The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1983) is a 53-item measure of symptoms that cause the service users’ to experience psychological distress within the previous week. Psychometric evaluations (Derogatis & Melisartos, 1983: Derogatis & Fitzpatrick, 2004) have shown that the BSI is a reliable and valid measure. It has good test-retest reliability and internal consistency, and it shows high convergence with comparable scales on the SCL-90-R and MMPI. Service users rate each symptom on a scale of 0 ‘Not at all’ to 4 ‘Extremely’. The Global Severity Index score, which is used in this report, is the best indicator of current distress levels.

• The Social Connectedness Scale-Revised

The SCS-R (Lee & Robins, 1995) is a fifteen-item self-report scale, which was designed to assess an individual’s subjective sense of social connectedness to their social world. Increased scores reflect higher social connectedness. Each item is rated on a 6 point Likert scale, from 1 Strongly Disagree to 6 Strongly Agree.