The reliability of psychiatric diagnoses.

Assessing Degree of Psychopathology from Diagnostic Statements

“…The two judges who This analysis leads to findings similar to those obtained with the forced sorting, but the range of scores for individual subjects is condensed (0-8 as versus [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. When the four groups are compared with regard to their ratings on the nine-point scale, the same pattern found with the forced sorting was obtained, the group with highest psychopathology is the Non-Adoptees, followed by the Index Adoptees, Cross-Foster subjects, and Control-Adoptees in that order, as shown in Table VIII …”

Demography, Sociology and Schizophrenia

“…Three psychiatrists showed 91 per cent agreement on their diagnoses. On the other hand, a study by Ash (1949) shows quite clearly that as the number of diagnostic classifications is increased so that finer diag nosis is required, agreement between diagnos ticians is reduced. Secondly, "one cannot take it for granted that mental illness is identical with patient status" (Fried and Lindemann, 1961, p. 93), and studies which apply a list of symptoms arbitrarily to a non-clinical sample W. TAUSS December, 1968 "emerge with devastatingly high figures regard ing the prevalence of mental illness" (ibid.…”

Medicalized Psychiatry and the Talking Cure: A Hermeneutic Intervention

“…Exacerbating this problem of medical legitimacy from a diagnostic perspective was the inability of psychiatrists to consistently agree in their diagnoses of patients who presented the same symptoms. Critics often point to the 1949 study by psychologist Philip Ash that revealed how three psychiatrists who had examined 52 male patients in a clinical setting were able to reach the same diagnostic conclusion regarding the patient's condition only 20% of the time (Ash 1949;Spiegel 2005).…”