Functional remission is an important treatment goal in schizophrenia, as independent living and reintegration of patients into the community and the workplace is the ultimate goal of any treatment. Nevertheless, assessing functional remission in schizophrenia is problematic, as it is a multifactorial and complex entity reflecting various aspects such as symptoms severity, personal skills and socio-cultural expectancies.

The different instruments available for clinicians will be reviewed, with large differences regarding way of administration (self-report, clinican or informant rating, tests), strength (speed, easiness, accurency, capacity to involve patients, stardardized, objectivity), and limits (validity, biases, tto narrow, costly, time-consuming, culture specific). These will be detailed for GAF, PSP, UPSA, CAN, FSRS and FROGS.

A shorter (and quicker) version of the FROGS will also be presented, restricting the instrument on four items that are able to capture a large part of the variance of the functional impriovement which is associated wityh longer clinical remission (time and improvement sensitive).