[Assessment of the functioning of the daily life in people with long term mental disorder. Adaptation and reliability of the Spanish version of the "Basic Everyday Living Skills" (BELS)].

INTRODUCTION: There is a close relationship between mental illness and the decay of global functioning. The level of support and care needed by a person will also depend closely of the level of his or her functioning. The aim of this article is to present the Spanish version of the Basic Every Day Living Schedule (BELS) and its reliability that has been studied on a sample of Spanish population. METHODOLOGY: Once the first translation into Spanish was satisfactory back translated into English, 77 residents in different sheltered homes were assessed by two pair of researchers. For the statistical analysis the Kappa coefficient was used. RESULTS: Kappa mean values for the opportunity scale was 0.791 and 0.743 for the performance scale. CONCLUSION: BELS is an assessment instrument with adequate reliability properties for the purpose for which it was conceived: to assess the basic abilities for the every day living.