SCALE TO IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT

The proposed project is related to NIMH research topic Assessment of Emotional and Psychological States. The goal is to develop a screening questionnaire that assists clinicians in diagnosing the most common DSM-IV Axis I disorders seen in patients presenting for outpatient mental health treatment. An item pool of questions has been drafted for the proposed development of the Psychiatric Diagnostic Screening Questionnaire (PDSQ) which will screen for 15 DSM-IV Axis I disorders. The proposed PDSQ will be 1) brief enough for completion by patients prior to their intake appointment, 2) sufficiently broad-based to capture the more frequent disorders seen in routine clinical practice, 3) amenable to quick hand scoring for immediate availability of information, and 4) directly based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The purpose of Phase I is to develop the PDSQ, determine the feasibility of administering the proposed scale in routine clinical practice, and evaluate the basic psychometric properties of the preliminary measure. These data will be used to guide a revision of the scale, and a similar procedure will be conducted to establish the properties of the modified instrument. Phase I will result in a psychometrically strong instrument to be used in the larger Phase II validation studies