THE WORLD-HEALTH-ORGANIZATION SOMATOFORM DISORDERS SCHEDULE - A PRELIMINARY-REPORT ON DESIGN AND RELIABILITY

The World Health Organization (WHO) Somatoform Disorders Schedule (SDS ) is a highly standardized instrument for the assessment of somatoform disorders according to the tenth revision of the International Classi fication of Diseases (ICD-10) and the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). The SDS was produced in the framewor k of the WHO International Study of Somatoform Disorders and tested fo r its reliability in Brazil, India, Italy, the USA and Zimbabwe. A sam ple of 180 patients from general psychiatry, primary care and general medical settings were interviewed with the SDS within a three-day inte rval by non-clinician and clinician interviewers. The agreement betwee n the two interviews was tested using the intraclass correlation coeff icients (ICC) and kappa statistic. The test-retest reliability of the SDS was found to be very good (the ICC for all the centres was 0.76; o verall kappa value for SDS questions was 0.58; one-third of SDS questi ons had a kappa value of 0.60 or higher). The field test results of th e SDS indicated that the instrument may be administered in larger stud ies by non-clinician interviewers without compromising the ability to document the prevalence of somatoform disorders in different cultures.