Citation

Frick PJ, Lahey BB, Applegate B, Kerdyck L, Ollendick T, Hynd GW, Garfinkel B, Greenhill L, Biederman J, Barkley RA. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 1994; 33(4): 529-539.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa 35487.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1994, American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, Publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8005906

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: We tested the predictive utility of symptoms for proposed DSM-IV definitions of the disruptive behavior disorders using indices corrected for symptom and diagnosis base rates. METHOD: The field trials sample consisted of 440 clinic-referred youths who were consecutive referrals to a heterogeneous group of mental health clinics. Multiple informants were interviewed to determine the presence of symptoms and diagnoses. RESULTS: Some symptoms which were either not in DSM-III or DSM-III-R, or were modifications of DSM-III-R symptoms, had greater diagnostic efficiency than did several existing symptoms. Symptom utility estimates were generally similar for different ages and genders, although some interesting age and sex trends emerged for a few symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The results supported the inclusion of more restricted definitions of "lying" and "truancy" to increase their association with a conduct disorder diagnosis and they supported the elimination of "swearing" in the oppositional defiant disorder criteria. In addition to their relevance for developing optimal criteria for DSM-IV, these results can aid DSM-IV users by providing a useful guide to the relative efficiency of individual symptoms based on data from a large heterogeneous clinic population.

Language: en