Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:825-829
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
The revision of axis V in DSM-III-R: should symptoms have been included?
AE Skodol, BG Link, PE Shrout and E Horwath
Department of Psychiatry, School of Public Health, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY.
The authors studied the relationship of psychological symptoms to
clinicians' ratings on DSM-III's axis V. A total of 355 patients received
multiaxial assessments and were reinterviewed under blind conditions with
the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview, which contains scales to
measure aspects of social and occupational functioning and various symptom
dimensions. The majority of symptom scales were correlated significantly
with axis V ratings. Axis I diagnosis explained 19.0% of the variance in
axis V; demographics, 6.5%; and symptoms, 7%. Symptoms had a larger effect,
in terms of explained variance, than adaptive functioning variables and
tended to detract from the latter's significance. These results have
implications for axis V in DSM-III-R and for planning DSM-IV.
