Screening for mental disorders: performance of the Composite International Diagnostic - Screener (CID-S)

This paper introduces the Composite International Diagnostic – Screener (CID–S) for mental disorders, a 12‐item self‐report questionnaire that is based on core diagnostic questions from the Composite International Diagnostic Interview for the assessment of DSM‐IV and ICD‐10 disorders (CIDI) for use in two‐stage epidemiological designs. Data are reported relating to the performance of the CID–S in a two‐stage study of a random sample of 1095 respondents, using a wide range of DSM‐IV/CIDI diagnoses (somatoform, anxiety, depressive, other affective, and substance‐use disorders). In the first stage, all subjects filled out the screening instrument. Seven to 30 days later trained clinical interviewers administered the computer‐assisted full CIDI. The CID–S had an overall sensitivity of 85.3% (range for specific diagnoses 74.7% for alcohol use disorders to 100% for panic disorders) and negative predictive value (NPV) of 92.0% (range 91.0%–100%) for any current (12‐month) diagnosis and similar values for lifetime disorders (80.7%, NPV: 85.1%). Likelihood for a DSM‐IV diagnosis increased steadily from 10.5% among screen negatives, to 24.9% among those endorsing one screening item to 100% among those endorsing more than eight of the screening items. The performance of the individual CID–S items overall was good, except for three disorders: agoraphobia, somatoform disorders and substance use disorders. Overall, the CID–S was found to be a time‐efficient diagnostic screening tool for most mental disorders (except for some somatoform and substance use disorders), when used in a two‐stage design with a two to 12 week interval between investigations. Copyright © 1999 Whurr Publishers, Ltd.