Comparative description of the SADS and PSE.

The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS), Part I, and the Present State Examination (PSE) are both structured interviews to assess the present psychiatric condition. The present article attempts to provide researchers with information that may help them to decide which of the two instruments would be most suitable for their purposes. We describe the similarities and differences in the instruments' development, purpose, method, content, training requirements, reliability, and validity to point out their relative strengths and weaknesses for psychiatric assessment. Essentially, the PSE is, by both content and method, a mental status examination. The SADS, Part I, is, by content, an amalgam of a mental status examination and a history of the present illness, but, by method, is a history of the present illness. Neither comprises a complete traditional assessment of the current condition.