The Canberra Interview for the Elderly: assessment of its validity in the diagnosis of dementia and depression.

The Canberra Interview for the Elderly (CIE) has been developed as a field instrument for identifying cases of dementia and depression, according to the diagnostic criteria in both draft ICD-10 and DSM-III-R. It has been designed to be administered by lay interviewers and responses are assembled algorithmically to derive diagnoses. The validity of the CIE was assessed using a sample of 75 elderly patients attending a hospital clinic. The CIE diagnoses were compared with clinical judgements made at the time of recruitment into the study and later by 3 clinicians using the information collected by the lay interviewers. Agreement between the CIE and the clinicians' diagnoses was as great as agreement between the clinicians themselves, meeting or exceeding agreement observed for comparable instruments designed for lay administration.