Progress in the classification of functional psychoses.
The three most widely used diagnostic systems in American psychiatry--the Feighner criteria, the Research Diagnostic Criteria, and DSM-III--appeared sequentially at 4-year intervals. The fact that the latter two systems each incorporated changes in essentially all diagnostic categories implied progress toward greater validity; however, this assumption has rarely been tested directly. To do this, the authors applied each of these three systems to 98 consecutively admitted patients with nonmanic psychoses. Although family history and 6-month follow-up data strongly supported the validity of diagnostic distinctions made in each of the three systems, they did not show increments in validity with successively developed criteria sets.
Coryell
W
W
Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City 52242.
Zimmerman
M
M
D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D008370:Manuals as Topic / Q000592:standards; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology