Diagnosing schizophrenia in 1982: the effect of DSM-III

In 1982, 2 years after the introduction of DSM-III, the authors sent questionnaires to 1,313 psychiatrists in the United States asking what criteria they used to diagnose schizophrenia. They received responses from 341 and compared these with responses of 301 psychiatrists to the same question in October 1980, 3 months after the introduction of DSM-III. The results indicate that DSM-III did not have a major effect on the diagnostic practices of psychiatrists from 1980 to 1982. A high number of psychiatrists continued to approach the diagnosis of schizophrenia in an individualistic, unsystematic way.