The clinical global impression scale for borderline personality disorder patients (CGI-BPD): a scale sensible to detect changes

Abstract

The CGI-BPD scale is an adaptation of the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale designed to assess severity and post-intervention changes in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It contains 10 items that score the nine relevant psychopathological domains of BPD, plus an additional global score. The CGI-BPD has two formats, the CGI-BPD-S, to evaluate the present severity, and the CGIBPD- I to evaluate improvement. To establish the psychometric properties of the CGI-BPD, the test was administered to 78 BPD patients, 11 men and 67 women, within the framework of a 4-month therapeutic intervention. The modified scale showed good validity and reliability (alpha 0.85 and 0.89; CCI: 0.86 and 0.78), adequate sensitivity to change, and a two-factor structure accounting for 67.4 % of total variance. While remaining simple to administer, the CGI-BPD may correct the excessive generalisation contained in its original version and is a useful tool to evaluate severity and change in BPD patients.