Diagnostic Concordance in Primary Care Somatization Disorder

Abstract

A sample of 196 primary care patients with multiple unexplained complaints was used to examine diagnostic concordance between the Feighner criteria, the Research Diagnostic Criteria, DSM-III criteria, and DSM-III-R criteria for somatization disorder. The DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for somatization disorder maintain a high concordance with the DSM-III criteria for somatization disorder (Kappa = 0.91), a moderate concordance with the Feighner criteria (Kappa = 0.66), but only a fair concordance with the Research Diagnostic Criteria (Kappa = 0.47). These results provide further evidence that DSM-III-R describes a slightly different sample of somatization disorder patients than does the Feighner and Research Diagnostic Criteria.