THE UTILITY OF THE SCL-90-R FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF WAR-ZONE RELATED POSTTRAUMATIC-STRESS-DISORDER

A scale for assessing war-zone-related posttraumatic stress disorder ( WZ-PTSD scale) was derived from the Symptom Checklist-90-R by identify ing items that best discriminated Vietnam theater veterans with and wi thout PTSD (N = 202). The 25-item WZ-PTSD scale had excellent internal consistency and signal detection analyses revealed that its diagnosti c utility was comparable to or exceeded that of several established PT SD scales and measures of global distress. In a cross-validation sampl e (N = 99), the diagnostic utility of the WZ-PTSD scale was stable, wh ereas other PTSD scales performed more poorly The WZ-PTSD scale appear s to be a valuable new measure of PTSD that can be particularly useful in archival data sets or in any situation where other PTSD measures a re not available.