ASSESSMENT OF OLDER COMBAT VETERANS WITH THE CLINICIAN-ADMINISTERED PTSD SCALE

A study of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among older combat veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict was conducted. The C linician-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 b e a good discriminator of PTSD: Out of the 125 cases, only 9 were misc lassified 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 a ppropriate scale for use with older combat veterans.