A standardized psychiatric interview for use in community surveys.

SuRVEYS of psychiatric illness in the community are at present handicapped by the lack of valid and reliable methods of case-identification. The widely varying estimates of psychiatric prevalence made by different workers in this field (Lin and Standley, 1962) emphasize the urgent need for such techniques, which could be used both in field surveys and in the screening of general practice populations. In large-scale psychiatric surveys, the use of a two-stage screening procedure is desirable and may, indeed, be essential for economic reasons. The first stage entails the selection of possible or 'potential'