Assessing reliability, validity, and clinical utility of the BEST-Index in measuring living skills among forensic inpatients.

The assessment of behavioral change as a result of inpatient treatment in forensic psychiatry is an important precondition for violence risk prediction in forensic psychiatry. In relation to a multitude of diagnostically based risk assessment instruments, there is a shortage of appropriate instruments with which to carry out valid and reliable therapeutic assessments that are behaviorally based and therefore appropriate for use within varied psychiatric contexts. There is also a need for instruments which will offer assessors the opportunity to examine possible relationships between criteria of social risk and criteria of more general aspects of social functioning.

Assessing living skills in forensic mental health care with the behavioural status index: a European network study.

Assessment of living skills and violence risk in forensic psychiatric patients is a priority for clinicians. Suitably fine-grained instruments are rare. The goal of this study was to compare a norm-based psychometric assessment battery (the Behavioural Status [BEST] Index) with known valid instruments.

[The evaluation of living skills in forensic-psychiatric patients].

The role of daily living skills in forensic psychiatric patients in relation to psychotherapeutic progress and the potential reduction of dangerous behaviour has been neglected in the scientific discussion about clinical instruments for the evaluation of dangerousness and recidivism. This is mainly due to the lack of adequate observationally based instruments allowing for valid and reliable therapeutic assessments. Therefore, a new means of assessment focusing on daily living skills and social risk (the BEST-Index [Behavioural Status Index] was applied to n = 86 German forensic psychiatric patients.

Cognitive-attitudinal aspects of key-worker's talk about their patients in forensic psychiatric institutions.

Scope: Within an international network study involving four European countries (COMSKILLS), results on clinical-qualitative data are reported and discussed. A total of 103 semi-structured interviews were conducted, representing 45 per cent of the patients involved in the project (N=231).

Method: The coding framework represents a means of identifying and measuring aspects of complexity and specificity in the way in which key workers talk about care in relation to individual patients.

The Behavioural Status Index: testing a social risk assessment model in a high security forensic setting.

The Behavioural Status Index model suggests that 'social risk' tends to vary inversely with an individual's insight and capacity to perform key communication and social skills. The aim of this study was to describe emergent trends in data related to the risk, insight, and communication and social skills subscales used in the model. Data were collected from 503 patients in two high security mental health hospitals.

The influence of social support on caregiver coping.

Investigations into the act of proving care to a dementing family member typically approach the phenomenon from a stress/burden paradigm. Many studies have sought to highlight the relationship between of a range of dementia care factors (such as illness duration, patient symptoms/characteristics, service provision, etc.) and the experience of caregiver stress.

What does phenomenology offer to the study of care-giving?

Care giving to a dementia sufferer is complex (Parsons, 1997) and inherently stressful (Baldwin et al 1989). It is suggested that the predominance of the care-giver stressor-burden research paradigm during the last thirty years has frequently been uni-dimensional, objectively oriented, generally equivocal, and unconvincing in its findings. Dillehay and Sandys (1990), suggest that preoccupation w ith such typically narrow approaches has delayed the much-needed development of a more accurate understanding of the lived experience (the phenomenology of care-giving).

The meaning of incontinence in dementia care.

Exploring ways of helping dementia sufferers and their carer's cope at home is central to government philosophy and legislation (Department of Health, 2001). The success of such support relies on having an accurate understanding of the nature and extent of the illness, and the caregiving experience. This article recognises and validates the pre-eminent role of spouse caregivers in the day-to-day maintenance of dementia sufferers.

Caregiver coping in dementing illness--implications for short-term respite care.

The increasing cost of caring for older people with dementia is just one of two key justifications for researching service interventions designed to help sustain dementia sufferers within their own home. Secondly, studies consistently highlight an almost universal determination by spouse caregivers to avoid institutionalisation by coping to the 'bitter end' or at least until their coping resources have been irrevocably depleted (Knight et al, 1993; Barnes et al, 1981; Upton, 2001). The experience of coping with a dementing spouse is known to be enduring, stressful and pathogenic to the caregiver (Schwarz and Blixen, 1997; Rosenheimer and Francis, 1992).

Relationships among risk, and communication and social skills in a high security forensic setting.

The Behavioural Status Index was developed for risk assessment within forensic care. This paper reports data analysis for the Behavioural Status Index and its subscales. Data were collected, using a repeated measures method by primary nurses, from a sample of 503 individual patients in two high security mental health hospitals in the UK.