Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) is a semistuctured interview for making most of the major DSM-IV Axis I psychiatric diagnoses. The SCID-II is a semi-structured interview for making DSM-IV Axis II (Personality Disorder) diagnoses. There are at least 700 reports of published studies in which the SCID was the diagnostic instrument used. Major parts of the SCID have been translated into other languages, including Danish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Zulu.

An Axis I SCID assessment with a psychiatric patient usually takes between 1 and 2 hours, depending on the complexity of the past psychiatric history and the subject's ability to clearly describe episodes of current and past symptoms. A SCID with a non-psychiatric patient takes 1/2 hour to 1-1/2 hours. A SCID II personality assesment takes about 1/2 to 1 hour.

The instrument was designed to be administered by a clinician or trained mental health professional, for example a psychologist or social worker. Ideally, this would be someone who has had experience performing unstructured, open-ended question, diagnostic evaluations. However, for the purposes of some research studies, non-clinician research assistants, who have extensive experience with the study population in question, and who have demonstrated competence, have been trained to use the SCID. The less clinical experience and specific education the potential interviewer has had, the more training is required.

Reliability and validity of the SCID for DSM-III-R has been reported in several published studies. With regard to reliability, the range in reliability is enormous, depending on the type of the sample and research metholodogy (i.e., joint vs. test-retest, multi-site vs. single site with raters who have worked together, etc.)

SCID-D
The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative disorders (SCID-D) is widely used to diagnose Dissociative Disorders, especially in research settings. This interview takes about 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on individual's experiences. The SCID-D has been translated into Dutch and used in the Netherlands.