GMS training

I havent blogged for a while, I know I have been so busy with my work.
Well just before Christmas vacation I went to a GMS Training with Nick in Liverpool. This is a tool that will be used for the Prison project. It was quite an intense time but was very interesting as well. It does look like a very useful tool although I think it is a bit too long. I guess for prisoners it isnt that bad, I mean they have all the time to offer for the interview.

The tool is called the Geriatric Mental State (GMS), and is self explanatory really. This schedule assess and records mental state in the elderly. After completing the interviews, the data is input into the AGECAT (The Automated Geriatric Examination for Computer Assited Taxonomy), which groups symptoms into symptom components. These components are further grouped, and these groups are used to derive levels of confidence of diagnosis for each syndrome cluster.
The syndrome clusters represent:
Organic
Schizophrenia and related paranoid states
Mania
Depression
Obsessional Neuroses
Hypochondriasis
Phobic Neuroses
Anxiety Neuroses

This is what I understood so far because we didnt actually use the computer tool. I will try and get hold of Nick at a later stage of his project and see what further analysis is done to the data