Background and History

One of the aims of the World Health Organization (WHO) and US Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) joint program on psychiatric diagnosis and classification was the development and standardization of diagnostic assessment instruments for use in clinical research around the world. The International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE) is a semistructured clinical interview originally designed to assess the personality disorders (PDs) in the ICD-10 and DSM-III-R classification systems, and subsequently modified for compatibility with DSM-IV.

The IPDE is an outgrowth and adaptation for international use of the Personality Disorder Examination (PDE) (Loranger, 1988). To facilitate the development of the IPDE, beginning in 1985 several international workshops were convened. At these meetings WHO and ADAMHA officials, together with representatives of the international psychiatric community, discussed the format of the interview, the wording of items, and the development of a scoring manual. Frequent revisions were made to reflect the experience of interviewers with trial versions. Investigators at the various centres involved in the field trial described in this volume translated the instrument into the following languages: Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Norwegian, Swahili, and Tamil. The translations were back-translated into English by a psychiatrist or psychologist who had not seen the original English version. Variations and problems in the back-translation were then reviewed with those who undertook the original translation, and corrections were made when indicated.