Applicability and reliability of a portuguese version of the structured interview for DSM-III-R personality disorders

ABSTRACT

The importance of personality psychopathology has been recently recognized, since it may influence the manifestation and prognosis of the other psychiatric conditions. The systematic evaluation of patients for personality disorders (PD) has been favored by some structure instruments developed in the past few years. The aim of this study was to translate into Portuguese and evaluate the applicability and interrater reliability of the "Structure Interview for DSM-III-R Personality Disorders" (SIDP-R). The subjects were 40 patients with DSM-III-R obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and 40 nonpsychiatric patients from a university outpatient service. All 80 interviews were made simultaneously by two raters, with independent scoring. The coefficient of agreement (Kappa) was calculated for nine individual PDs and ranged from 0.55 to 1.00. The OCD patients had significantly (p <0.01) more PDs (70 percent) than the nonpsychiatric group (15 percent). No significant sex differences were found in the prevalence of PDs. There was much diagnostic overlap, specially between avoidant and dependent PDs. The Portuguese version of the SIDP-R had good applicability and satisfactory interrater reliability and may be a useful instrument to assess axis II disorders