[Studies with the AMP system: comparison of symptoms from Berlin and Zürich]

Symptoms of 1830 psychiatric patients from Berlin and of 783 patients from Zurich were assessed using the AMP-system. The symptoms were analysed according to their frequency and their potency to differentiate diagnostic groups. The following 4 categories of symptoms proved to be useful: frequently occurring and specific or unspecific, rarely occurring and specific or unspecific. Factor analyses of the frequently occurring unspecific symptoms yielded three general dimensions, i.e., "depression", "disturbance of memory and thinking" and "hostility".