Diagnosing schizophrenia: Professor Kraepelin and the research diagnostic criteria

The authors applied current diagnostic criteria (the Research Diagnostic Criteria developed by Spitzer and associates and DSM-III) to Kraepelin's descriptions of his own patients and compared Kraepelin's diagnoses of "functional" psychoses related to schizophrenia with those of today. Thirty-two case histories were selected from Kraepelin's textbook of psychiatry. Two psychiatrists screened out any comments from the case histories that might have revealed Kraepelin's original diagnoses.The screened case histories were then diagnosed by one of the authors. A high degree of agreement was found between Kraepelin's diagnoses and the diagnoses of present-day systems.