Important relationships exist between chronic psychiatric patients' symptoms of disorder and their readiness to be discharged from inpatient treatment. Behavioral rating scales can supplement clinical decision making by standardizing information about patients' functioning. The authors assessed whether two different behavioral measures described the same dimensions of disordered behavior in an older chronic patient population.Multivariate correlation analysis (canonical analysis) was used to assess relationships between items on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale and the scales in the Discharge Readiness Inventory.Three significant correlation variates were found. The variates reflected patterns of positive psychiatric symptomatology with a low level of psychosocial competence, a low level of symptomatology with a low level of psychosocial competence, and paranoid symptomatology with a high level of psychosocial competence.The presence or absence of psychiatric symptomatology and possibly the type of symptomatology are relevant in assessing patients' readiness for discharge.