Neurotic and psychosomatic disorders (F4, F5). Results from the ICD-10 field trial of the Diagnostic Criteria for Research in German-speaking countries.

The concept of neurotic and psychosomatic disorders in ICD-10, chapter V (F), follows the principle of descriptive diagnosis; therefore the classical approaches with special regard to psychoanalytic terminology were abandoned. These changes were subject of a multicentric field trial in German speaking countries evaluating practicability, acceptability, feasibility, reliability and aspects of validity of the ICD-10 Diagnostic Criteria for Research: Involving 34 psychiatric, child-psychiatric and psychosomatic centres 17 video-documented cases with ICD-10 diagnoses from sections F4 and F5 were assessed independently in case conferences. On the basis of 1,116 ratings, acceptability and practicability were rated as comparatively sufficient. For 3-character diagnostic categories, the chance-corrected interrater reliability coefficients (kappa) showed a range from 0.62 to 0.95. The concordance with the independently assessed expert consensus diagnosis for the different cases showed a range between 87 and 100%.