The BARS scale is available in the public domain, allowing unrestricted use of this scale. An electronic copy of the BARS scale can be requested from Dr. Byerly at matt.byerly@utsouthwestern.edu .
Strengths
- Good sensitivity (73%) and specificity (74%)
- Brief clinician-administered adherence tool
- Visual Analog Scale to determine proportion of doses taken in past month
- Valid and reliable tool
- Less costly alternative to EM
- <5 minutes to administer
Weaknesses
- Relatively new scale so less clinical experience with scale available
- Use of the term “antipsychotic medication” limits the ability to generalize to patients with other psychiatric conditions
- Scale has not been examined in non-psychotic psychiatric conditions