GLOBAL ASSESSMENT OF RELATIONAL FUNCTIONING SCALE (GARF) .2. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY IN A SAMPLE OF FAMILIES OF BIPOLAR PATIENTS

The companion article by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry ( GAP) Committee on, the Family (see p. 155, this issue) describes the d evelopment of the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) s cale. The present study evaluated the reliability and concurrent valid ity of a manualized version of the GARF in recently episodic bipolar p atients (N = 73) participating with family members in laboratory inter action tasks. The GARF was applied with high reliability by raters wit h little clinical experience. GARF ratings discriminated between famil ies rated high and low in expressed emotion, with families rated as hi gh in, emotional overinvolvement showing the lowest relational functio ning scores. GARF scores also correlated with affective negativity sco res derived from the interactional task-based affective style and copi ng style coding systems. However, relational ratings were independent of levels of concurrent symptoms or illness chronicity among individua l patients. GARF ratings may inform the treatment plans for patients w ith psychiatric disorders, but the optimal methods of data collection and rater training must be determined.