Flexibility and Rigidity in Object Relational Functioning: Assessing Change in Suicidal Ideation and Global Psychiatric Functioning Using the SCORS–G

ABSTRACT

The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global Rating Method (SCORS–G; Westen, 1995) has been widely used as an assessment measure of object relational functioning across a number of stimuli. This study used the SCORS–G to investigate associations between global impairments and rigidity in quality of object relations with changes in suicidal ideation and psychiatric functioning over time. Participant narratives describing actual interpersonal experiences were collected using the Relationship Anecdote Paradigm (Luborsky, 1998) from a sample of individuals diagnosed with complex psychopathology completing residential psychiatric treatment. We found that a greater range in affective quality and emotional investment in relationship scores at admission into treatment were significantly related to a reduction in suicidal ideation as well as improvements in global psychiatric functioning at 5-year follow-up. Thus, participants who acknowledged having both healthy as well as troubled relationships in their daily lives were less suicidal and less likely to experience disruptive psychiatric symptoms over time than those who described more restricted or uniform relational experiences on entering treatment. Implications for calculating range scores and using various narrative techniques when applying the SCORS–G method are discussed.