Reliability of a Procedure for Measuring and Classifying “Present Psychiatric State”

Abstract

It is generally agreed that psychiatric illnesses can fairly reliably be categorized into four broad groups—organic psychoses, functional psychoses, neuroses and personality disorders. Cases are assigned with greatest confidence to the first group and with least confidence to the fourth. The reliability of specific diagnoses within these classes is much less secure and decreases in the same order. The best recent reviews of the literature are by Kreitman (1961) and Foulds (1965).