Clinician-Rated Dimensions of Psychosis Symptom Severity (CRDPSS)

The Clinician-Rated Dimensions of Psychosis Symptom Severity (CRDPSS) scale is used in DSM-5 to assess the dimensional aspects of psychosis in daily clinical practice, created in 2018 and comprised of eight domains that measure and assesses the severity of transdiagnostic mental health symptoms that cover the domains of psychotic disorders, including delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, abnormal psychomotor behavior, negative symptoms (i.e., restricted emotional expression or avolition), impaired cognition, depression, and mania.

The CRDPSS was designed to be used by a trained clinical professional while interviewing the patient, with the goal of capturing meaningful variations in the severity of symptoms during the past 7 days, which may help with treatment planning, prognostic decision-making, and to be used in research studies on pathophysiological mechanisms.

The CRDPSS has been designed to track changes in the individual’s symptom severity over time, the measure may be completed at regular intervals of 7 days. High scores on a particular domain may indicate significant and problematic areas for the individual that might warrant further assessment, treatment, and follow-up. Clinical judgment should guide decision making as there are limited psychometric studies of the CRDPSS that support its use as a treatment monitoring instrument solely. There are however over five studies that are showing possible clinical usability, but inconsistently. In general implementation in clinical practice should be done with caution, until future studies validate its use, and reliability for treatment progress.