Teaching the Present State Examination in America

The Present State Examination (PSE) has gained increasing acceptance in psychiatric research. As with any clinical method, its usefulness rests not only on its reliability and pertinence but also on how successfully it can be taught. Its teachability is particularly important for American-trained clinicans, given the wide differences between Anglo-European and American clinical practices and the fact that the PSE developed from Anglo-European clinical concepts and techniques. The authors reports that by means of preliminary phenomenological training and formal PSE demonstrations and supervised interviews, the PSE can be readily learned by diverse American-trained clinicians with interrater reliability comparable to that of British and European clinicians.