Psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents: results of the ICD-10 field trial.

Of the numerous changes made in the classification of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents in ICD-10 the most important are described. In an evaluation of the revised scheme, 7 raters from 2 facilities classified 40 case histories with both ICD-10 and ICD-9 codes. For ICD-10 and 4 character codes the level of agreement was 56% (ICD-9: 60%). As expected, 3-character codes yielded better agreement (ICD-10: 71%; ICD-9: 72%). Within-facility agreement was roughly the same for each. The lowest levels of agreement for a given category were for mixed disorders of conduct and emotions (F92) and depressive disorders (F31, F43). The reasons for this are discussed.