The Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines: Discriminating BPD from other Axis II Disorders

Abstract

The Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB) was revised to sharpen its ability to discriminate between clinically diagnosed borderline patients and patients with other types of Axis II clinical diagnoses. The discriminant power of both the revised DIB (DIB-R) and the DIB itself was then tested in a sample of 237 inpatients and outpatients given an Axis II diagnosis by their therapists. The DIB-R was administered blind to clinical diagnosis, while a DIB score was independently derived from DIB-R and other data using a predetermined scoring algorithm. At a cutoff of 8, the DIB-R had a sensitivity of .82, a specificity of .80, a positive predictive power of .74, and a negative predictive power of .87. Overall, these conditional probabilities compare favorably to those obtained for the DIB at its standard cutoff of 7: sensitivity = .97, specificity = .27, positive predictive power = .47, and negative predictive power = .93. They also compare favorably with those obtained in studies that used semistructured or self-report instruments based on DSM-III or DSM-III-R criteria for BPD.