[History, description and application of the AMDP system and its derivative systems (AGP, FPDS)].

The AMP-System was born in Nurnberg in 1960; the XXth anniversary of its French adaptation was celebrated in Strasburg in October 1986: from Nurnberg to Strasburg, the european vocation of the AMDP-System has steadily grown. The AMDP-System is made of two parts: a part on history data (AMDP-1 to -3) and a part on the present psychiatric and somatic state (AMDP-4 and -5). The Psychopathology Scale contains 100 items + 15 "French" items (mainly on anxiety); the somatic scale, 40 + 7 items, all graded from 0 to 4; the interview and completion of the two scales takes ca. 45 to 60 mn. The reliability, validity, sensitivity and factorial reproducibility of these scales have been demonstrated in French as well as in German. The french-speaking section of the AMDP has definitely contributed to the improvement of the original System: semi-structured interview, anxiety factor vs. scale, syndromic scale etc. There presently exist two Systems derived from the AMDP: one for gerontopsychiatry (the AGP System) and one for forensic psychiatry (the FPDS System).