This article examines the sensitivity of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) for chronic complaints, and the question whether the alternative scoringprocedure, proposed by Goodchild and Duncan-Jones (CGHQ) provides an improvement in this respect. The study has been conducted on 175 new psychiatric outpatients. Patients with chronic complaints showed a significantly lower mean GHQ-total score compared to patients without chronic complaints, while the two groups did not differ with respect to the severity of their psychopathology. Both groups did not differ with respect to their mean CGHQ-total score. This suggests that the CGHQ-total score is a better indicator of het severity of the psychiatric state. As a screeninginstrument however the CGHQ compared to the GHQ did not offer an improvement. The alternative scoring procedure did not result in a substantial decrease in the number of false negatives. However, combining both procedures induced a significant decrease in the number of false negatives. The authors therefore suggest to use both scoring procedures at the same time.