title: Assessment of older combat veterans with the clinician-administered PTSD scale.
abstract: A study of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among older combat veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict was conducted. The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) was given to 125 older combat veterans, along with a computerized variant of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R for PTSD, the SCID-DTREE. (The SCID-DTREE was itself validated against the full SCID). Results showed the CAPS to be a good discriminator of PTSD: Out of the 125 cases, only 9 were misclassified using the SCID-DTREE as the base measure, a 93% efficiency. An alpha on the full CAPS was .95. This suggests that the CAPS is an appropriate scale for use with older combat veterans.
authors.affiliation: VA Medical Center, Augusta, Georgia 30904, USA.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hyer
authors.forename: M N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Summers
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Boyd
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Litaker
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Boudewyns
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003130:Combat Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology*