Patients who did not have an outpatient appointment after discharge were two times more likely to be rehospitalized in the same year than patients who kept at least one outpatient appointment. Aggregated annual rates indicated that patients who kept appointments had a one in ten chance of being rehospitalized, whereas those who did not had a one in four chance.

Preliminary reliability and validity data are reported on a new, brief measure of psychiatric symptomatology. The Symptom Assessment-45 Questionnaire (SA-45) is a 45-item, patient self-report symptom inventory derived from the original Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90), using cluster analytic methods. The SA-45 consists of nine 5-item scales assessing each of the same symptom domains as its parent instrument with no item overlap across domains. The vast majority of the internal consistency reliabilities for the SA-45's nine scales were in the .70s and .80s across different age and patient status samples. As expected, both adolescent and adult patient samples generally differed significantly from nonpatient control samples, and patients at treatment follow-up differed significantly from patients at intake. Moreover, depressed patients with and without psychotic features differed significantly on three scales. A cluster analysis generally supported the nine-scale structure of the inventory, but it failed to consistently support the distinction between the Paranoid Ideation and Interpersonal Sensitivity scales. Limitations to the study are noted, but overall, the initial findings support the use of the SA-45 in clinical settings. Suggestions for needed future research are presented.

Despite increasing interest in the psychological assessment of adolescents, no test usage surveys have specifically targeted practitioners who work with teenagers. This study involved distribution of research surveys to 600 psychologists; the 165 respondents who provided usable data yielded an adjusted response rate of 36%. The Wechsler Intelligence Scales, the Rorschach, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were identified as the most widely used intellectual, projective, and objective instruments, respectively, with adolescents. The Bender-Gestalt, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), sentence completion tests, figure drawings, and the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) were also included in the 10 most frequently used instruments. Data were also presented on standard test batteries used with adolescent clients, and advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of the MMPI.Adolescents have been the focus of extensive research interest in recent years, and a number of clinical measures and tests have been developed specifically for use with this age group. Assessment of adolescents has received increased coverage in many current texts that deal mainly with testing or assessment (e.g.,

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