The use of the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders in the assessment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder

The present study was designed to gather validity data on the Devereux Scal es of Mental Disorders (DSMD) for distinguishing among children and adolesc ents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; N = 32), Conduct Disorder (CD; N = 34), or no clinical diagnosis (NC; N = 65). Three types o f indicators were compared: (nj DSMD scale, composite, and total scores, (b ) the number of ADHD or CD-related items endorsed, and (c) diagnostic effic iency statistics (e.g., sensitivity, positive and negative predictive power ). The clinical groups did not differ significantly from each other, but bo th were significantly higher than the NC group on all DSMD scales. Moreover , there were significant differences between the ADHD and the CD groups on the number of respective ADHD and CD-related items endorsed. A cut-off-of s even to eight items yielded the best discrimination between the two diagnos tic groups. Diagnostic efficiency statistics indicate that the DSMD may be effective at differentiating between similar disruptive behavior disorders.