SFSS

Structured questionnaire of simulated symptoms (SFSS) according to M. Cima et al, Nervenarzt 2003; 74, 977-985. The self-assessment questionnaire is the validated German form of the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS). He describes an instrument for measuring simulation. The questionnaire has psychometric stability, consistency and can be used as a screening method. The subjects are presented with 75 questions from 5 disorder areas (neurological disorder, affective disorder, cognitive disorder, psychosis and low intelligence) with a variety of symptoms that can be answered with “yes” or “no”. There are cutoffs for the various fault areas. The threshold value for the total value (if the answer is yes) is 16, here the sensitivity is 87-95% with a specificity of 62-87%. The restriction is that the questionnaire has not been sufficiently validated on neurological or psychiatric patients.