| Popis: |
THE San Mateo County Department of TPublic Health and Welfare through its Mental Health Services Division has the responsibility of insuring adequate and efficient local psychiatric treatment services to all county residents. In order to adequately plan such a program it is imperative to ascertain the total number of county residents needing these services, together with their case characteristics and related sociocultural and demographic data. A reliable, valid, efficient and relatively inexpensive screening instrument is needed for this purpose. As reported previously,' the LeightonStirling County interview schedule was taken as the point of departure in developing this instrument. In this study, comparing two psychiatrist-raters, Dr. Alexander H. Leighton and Dr. Dorothea C. Leighton, we found satisfactorily high reliability of ratings and re-ratings by both raters, individually and jointly. Also, the joint ABCD ratings (probability of psychiatric diagnosis) were found less reliable than the average of the two independent ratings. Ratings of the kind and degree of psychiatric impairment also were less reliably rated. Our succeeding step was to determine whether local psychiatrists could be taught to utilize the Leighton method in a reliable manner, in order to derive useful local data. Essentially this procedure refines and standardizes the clinical judgment and rating procedures of two highly expert and experienced professionals. If satisfactory teachability and reliability could be demonstrated, then the Leighton instrument could be widely used through rating by locally trained people. The results from one study area could be compared to another. The Doctors Leighton agreed to provide the essential expert evaluation necessary to standardize 150 Stirling County study interview protocols, by their own rating and re-rating. Dr. Dorothea Leighton kindly made herself available to conduct a new rater training session in San Mateo County during August, 1965. |
