Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Global Assessment of Functioning Scale

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the postponed or extended response to the provocative event or the situation of threatening or catastrophic nature. Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (GAF) is the standard method in the process of clinical assessment of the overall level of patientʹs functioning. As such, it is widely used as the scale for the estimate of the level of disorders among patients with psychological, that is psychiatric disorders. The aim of this research is to determine the value of depression, anxiety, hopelessness and functioning in ambulatory treated PTSD patients, and the correlation between functioning, and anxiety depression, and hopelessness in the same group of patients.This prospective research is performed at the Department of Neurophysiology, Polyclinic for Neurophysiologic Disorders, Primary Health CenterTuzla in period from March to December 2008.The examined group consisted 50 (44 male) ambulatory treated patients who suffered from PTSD, with average age 50,5±5,6 years. In the analysis of anxiety, depression and hopelessness are used: Beckʹs Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beckʹs Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beckʹs Hopelessness Scale (BHS). During the statistical analysis Spearmanʹs coefficient of correlation were used. The majority of patients (38%) had a high level of depression, 82% had a difficult level of anxiety, and 56% had a difficult level of hopelessness. The level of functioning analyzed by GAF, significantly negatively correlated with the level of anxiety (r=-0,6196), and the level of depression (r=-0,6244), and the level of hopelessness (r=-0,5852). With assessment of the GAF in patients with PTSD we can very fast assess parameters such as anxiety, depression and hopelessness in different stage of patients treatment, and that may have a great importance for the further therapy strategy. Strong correlation is observed between level of functioning on one side, and anxiety, depression and hopelessness on other. The potential importance of the relation between the level of functioning analyzed by GAF with the level of anxiety, depression and hopelessness, is in the stage of fast assessment of convalescence or deterioration of patientʹs psychically condition after the conveyed medicament therapy or/and psychotherapy