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Objectives: The dangerousness of psychiatric patients is related to many well-documented factors in literature. To better document the course of dangerousness in most violent psychotic patients with severe and persistent diseases, we have developed a Treatment Progress Scale (TPS)., Method: The TPS was developed based on the literature research and the expertise of a multidisciplinary team., Results: The instrument has good interrater reliability and has shown to be easy to use, after being implemented for 5 years in a treatment unit at Philippe-Pinel Institute. The instrument provides a systematic assessment of important clinical parameters validating treatment observance and patient evolution over months. It also builds on the daily observations made by different members of the multidisciplinary team, the common language of patients and staff, the transparency of our work with patients, and the clear identification of most treatment targets. It also brings a valued complement to the dangerousness assessment., Conclusions: The TPS is a relevant instrument for the violent psychotic inpatient specific population. It provides a better identification of treatment progress and helps to specify dangerousness from an evolution perspective. Variations may be developed to assess outpatients and patients in a general setting.

By studying a series of 103 head severe injured patients who survived and were not vegetative, following post-traumatic diffuse brain damage with clinical signs of axial impairment, the authors stress the importance of using a neuropsychological assessment in order to approach the outcome quality, that the common outcome scales cannot disclose by themselves. They are leading to be careful with regard to the disorders specificity and the merely traumatic origin of sequelae. Moreover they stress the difficulty in predicting the morbidity during the acute stage and only retain the quality of the awake stage and the ventricular size evaluated 3 months following the trauma, as reliable predicting factors. The results point out the disorders heterogeneity observed by that type of head injured patients, despite of the striking constancy of memory defect.