SBIR-STTR Award

The proposed project is related to NIMH research topic Assessment of Emotional and Psychological States. The goal is to develop a screening questionnaire that assists clinicians in diagnosing the most common DSM-IV Axis I disorders seen in patients presenting for outpatient mental health treatment. An item pool of questions has been drafted for the proposed development of the Psychiatric Diagnostic Screening Questionnaire (PDSQ) which will screen for 15 DSM-IV Axis I disorders. The proposed PDSQ will be 1) brief enough for completion by patients prior to their intake appointment, 2) sufficiently broad-based to capture the more frequent disorders seen in routine clinical practice, 3) amenable to quick hand scoring for immediate availability of information, and 4) directly based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The purpose of Phase I is to develop the PDSQ, determine the feasibility of administering the proposed scale in routine clinical practice, and evaluate the basic psychometric properties of the preliminary measure. These data will be used to guide a revision of the scale, and a similar procedure will be conducted to establish the properties of the modified instrument. Phase I will result in a psychometrically strong instrument to be used in the larger Phase II validation studies PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The target markets include mental health professionals, primary care professionals, health maintenance organizations, and managed care companies. The instrument is expected to improve diagnostic accuracy, interview efficiency, and patient satisfaction with the evaluation process in mental health or primary care settings.

Thesaurus Terms:
anxiety, depression, diagnosis design /evaluation, mental disorder diagnosis, questionnaire comorbidity clinical research, human subject, psychometricsNational Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

The proposed project is related to NIMH research topic Assessment of Emotional and Psychological States. The goal is to develop a screening questionnaire that assists clinicians in diagnosing the most common DSM-IV Axis I disorders seem in patients presenting for outpatient mental health treatment. The Psychiatric Diagnostic Screening Questionnaire (PDSQ) has been constructed to be 1) brief enough to be completed by patients prior to their intake appointment, 2) sufficiently broad-based to capture the more frequent disorders seem in routine clinical practice, 3) amenable to quick hand scoring for immediate availability of information, and 4) directly based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Phase I resulted in a 121- item questionnaire with strong psychometric properties and evidence of validity when compared to other self-report measures of psychopathology. Phase I also established the feasibility of using the PDSQ in routine clinical settings. The final, and most important, step in the construction of the PDSQ entails validating its performance up against the mental health diagnostic goal standard-a semi-structured diagnostic interview - to determine sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values for each PDSQ subscale. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The target markets include mental health professionals, primary care professionals, health maintenance organizations, managed care companies, and corporations. The instrument is expected to improve diagnostic accuracy and interview efficiency with the evaluation process in mental health or primary care settings. In the corporate setting, the instrument is expected to be used in employee assistance programs.