Using DSM diagnoses for clinical, research, and administrative purposes

DSM data are often used to build statistics on the types of patients to who m mental health services are offered. These statistics are normally based o n broad categories that cluster finer subcategories for specific diagnoses. These broad categories can be built in a number of ways. The purpose of th is study is to determine the effect of the choices made in forming broad DS M categories, by observing the resulting differences in clinical health sta tistics. Results based on 3496 clinical cases show that DSM-III-(R) classif ications can be presented in different formats, leading to different outcom es. To avoid wrong conclusions based on one format, DSM statistics should a lways be presented in varying formats.