[Psychoses and driving fitness--development of criteria for clinical assessment].

The legal foundations for driver fitness evaluation in psychiatric conditions are enumerated in the 1985 "Illness and road traffic" expert opinion of the advisory medical council with the Federal Ministry of Transport. In case of the endogenous psychoses, in-patient episodes will invariably give rise to a call for expert psychiatric appraisement, notwithstanding the fact that reliable and valid criteria, with the exception of a standardized driving sample, continue to be almost non-existent. Carried out between 1989 and 1991 with support from the Federal Employment Institute in the framework of an employment creation project as well as from Bundesanstalt für Strassenwesen, the present study hence had been aimed at correlation-statistical identification of as valid driving ability predictors as possible in post-acute patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenic psychosis (ICD 295.3). The patients' pre-discharge fitness for driving, for one, was assessed using a number of psychological procedures and, for the other, was examined during a 60 minute practical driving sample, involving both city and autobahn driving. Driving behaviour during the practical trial was taken down according to pertinent categories, with subsequent judgment of overall driving performance both by self-ratings and by driving instructor ratings by means of a school grades scale of 1 to 6. With reference to pertinent studies elsewhere, our test battery had consisted of procedures for testing visual perception, reaction, selective and split attention, personality structure, anxiety, and risk-taking.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)