COMPARISON OF A DIAGNOSTIC CHECKLIST WITH A STRUCTURED INTERVIEW FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF DSM-III-R AND ICD-10 PERSONALITY-DISORDERS

The International Diagnostic Checklists for the assessment of the DSM- III-R and ICD-10 personality disorders (IDCL-P) were compared with a s tructured interview, the International Personality Disorder Examinatio n (IPDE), using a balanced test-retest design with forty psychiatric i npatients. The results, using pairwise kappa for the calculation of ag reement, were as follows: any personality disorder versus no personali ty disorder 0.52 for DSM-III-R diagnoses and 0.75 for ICD-10 diagnoses . The range for the single personality disorders diagnosed at least fi ve times was from -0.07 to 0.71 for DSM-III-R diagnoses and from 0.38 to 0.68 for ICD-10 diagnoses. Only for DSM-III-R diagnoses do figures exist from three other studies comparing two structured interviews wit h each other. The results of all four studies suggest that 60% of the variance in personality disorder diagnoses represents variance not att ributable to the patients, which is scientifically unacceptable.