The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS‐R): background and aims

TLDR

The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS‑R) is a new nationally representative community household survey of mental disorder prevalence and correlates in the US, conducted a decade after the original NCS. The study aims to investigate 1990s time‑trend correlates of mental disorders and to expand prevalence and correlates assessment beyond the baseline NCS, addressing substantive and methodological issues raised by the original survey. The NCS‑R repeats many original NCS questions and expands them with DSM‑IV‑based assessments to capture updated diagnostic criteria. © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS‐R) is a new nationally representative community household survey of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders in the US. The NCS‐R was carried out a decade after the original NCS. The NCS‐R repeats many of the questions from the NCS and also expands the NCS questioning to include assessments based on the more recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM‐IV) diagnostics system (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The NCS‐R was designed to (1) investigate time trends and their correlates over the decade of the 1990s and (2) expand the assessment of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders beyond the assessment in the baseline NCS in order to address a number of important substantive and methodological issues that were raised by the NCS. This paper presents a brief review of these aims. Copyright © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd.