From the Research
The Sheehan Disability Scale contains three main questions that assess functional impairment across three domains of life: work/school, social life, and family life/home responsibilities. For each domain, individuals rate their level of impairment on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 represents no impairment and 10 represents extreme impairment. The specific questions ask how much the symptoms have disrupted or interfered with work/school activities, social life/leisure activities, and family life/home responsibilities. Some versions of the scale include additional questions about days lost (how many days the person was completely unable to work or carry out normal activities due to symptoms) and days unproductive (how many days the person was able to work but had to cut back on what they did due to symptoms) 1. The Sheehan Disability Scale is widely used in psychiatric and psychological assessments because it provides a quick, quantifiable measure of functional impairment across major life domains, helping clinicians understand the real-world impact of mental health conditions on a person's daily functioning 2. Key aspects of the scale include:
- Assessing disability in work/school activities, family relationships, and social functioning 3
- Evaluating the functional impact of psychiatric disorders 3
- Providing a simple and easy-to-score scale for monitoring functional impairment in various patient populations, including those with ADHD 2
- Demonstrating good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity in different studies 4, 3, 2