An Investigation of Adherence to Diagnostic Criteria, Revisited: Clinical Diagnosis of the<i>DSM-IV/DSM-5</i>Section II Personality Disorders

Abstract

In an initial investigation by Morey and Ochoa (1989), adherence to DSM-III personality disorder diagnostic criteria was examined as an agreement rate between clinician (global) diagnoses and diagnoses algorithmically generated from DSM-III criteria rules. Morey and Ochoa (1989) findings suggested significant clinician-criterion diagnostic incongruity, a result that cross-validated in a DSM-III-R replication performed by Blashfield and Herkov (1996). The current study examined such adherence, utilizing DSM-IV decision rules, in a national sample of 337 clinicians and their target patients. The results of the current study are largely consistent with the earlier findings, with clinician-criterion agreement rates comparable to those commonly reported for interdiagnostician reliability. Ramifications for the future of personality disorder diagnostic classification are discussed.