Measuring slow and little changes in schizophrenia is not easy. Authors have censed criterias of improvement in psychiatry, psycho-dynamic literature, and communautary mental health programs for severe mentally ill people. After being clasified following psycho-dynamic point of view, 24 items are defined, covering all the fields of clinical expresion of chronic psychotic states. Most of items have three levels of intensity, following a nearly quantitative manner. More than 100 patients were quotated by several clinicians. Statistic study show a good sensibility to usual changes obtained by five-years periods of treatment. Usually only 4 items among 25 change in five years. That explains under-estimation of improvement among psychotic chronic patients receiving long-term complex comunautary, psychotherapic and psychopharmacologic treatments. Reliability of quotation is tested by measuring Kappas, and appears rather good. Multi-dimensional analysis give an eight-dimensions model of description of schizophrenic chronic states. This confirms need of more complex models to describe slow and little changes in chronic states than to show improvement of acute psychosis. Authors compare their first clasification following psycho-pathological hypothesis of improvement criterias, the groups of criterias that change together with time, and the stucture by criterias of the eight axes.

Training for use appears rather easy for psychiatric teams because each three levels of the 25 items is generally defined by many features. Using this methodic description of chronic states help to perceive the homeostatic and balanced aspects of the clinic stability. So chronic states can be thinked otherwise than immobility.