Reliability of ICD‐10 research criteria: an Arab perspective

Abstract

Within a broader World Health Organization (WHO) collaborative research around the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for research, the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO) ICD-10 research coordinating center at the Ain Shams Institute of Psychiatry presented the data collected from 8 Arab centers, which investigated a total of 233 patients using the local psychiatric interview schedules and diagnosed according to ICD-10 criteria. Interrater reliability was found to range between an almost perfect (0.81-1) to substantial agreement (0.61-0.80) (using the kappa coefficient) in diagnosing organic mental disorders, substance use disorders, schizophrenic, schizotypal and delusional disorders, affective disorders and neurotic and stress-related disorders. The categories of psychological development and child and adolescent disorders were diagnosed less frequently and the agreement between raters was lower. Though no culture-bound syndromes were encountered in any of the centers, difficulties in diagnosis using the research criteria were identified in the domain of simple schizophrenia and dissociative versus conversion disorders. These difficulties are discussed in consideration of the experience of our psychiatrists.

Can Autism Be Diagnosed Accurately in Children Under 3 Years?

“…With respect to interrater reliability, our results suggested higher levels of agreement for the broader discrimination of autism spectrum vs. no autism spectrum than for the more specific discrimination of autism vs. PDD-NOS. This pattern of results is consistent with that reported previously using older samples (Okasha & Seif El Dawla, 1992 ;Volkmar et al, 1994).…”

Reliability of the ICD‐10 diagnostic criteria for research in mental disorders in the Republic of Korea

“…At this point, concerned with the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for research field trial, we have few available foreign data to compare with ours. Our kappa values for the 2-character categories were slightly lower than those from the results in Arab countries (17). It is hard to draw any cultural differences between Korea and the Arab countries from these results.…”

Depressive Symptomatology and Short-Term Stability at a Nigerian Psychiatric Care Facility

“…The time, therefore, seems ripe for a revisit of the issue, from the perspective of new nosology of depression in the ICD-10. In a reliability study involving 233 patients from eight Arab centres, using the local psychiatric interview schedules and diagnosed according to ICD-10 criteria, it was found that the interrater values of agreement were substantially higher than those of a previous study that was carried out using the American DSM-III-R as a diagnostic system [20].…”