Am J Psychiatry 1981; 138:376-378
Copyright © 1981 by American Psychiatric Association
Accuracy of DSM-III diagnoses following a training program
LJ Webb, RS Gold, EE Johnstone and CC Diclemente
The authors describe a 2 1/2-day training program designed to teach mental
health professionals how to use a new DSM-III classification scheme. The
251 participants had previous clinical training but no prior exposure to
DSM-III. They were asked to diagnose three cases from a series of five
videotapes case vignettes; the authors then compared the participants'
diagnoses with the expert opinion of clinical faculty. The degree of
agreement among the participants with the expert opinion varied across the
five cases, but the overall level of agreement was high (74.2%). These
results indicate that with adequate training the new DSM-III classification
scheme can be accurately applied to diagnostic situations.
