The construction and comparison of psychiatric diagnostic stereotypes

How well do psychiatrists agree on the stereotypes of mental disorders? This question has importance for the general problem of agreement on diagnoses—if experts do not agree on the characteristics of a category, then there is little likelihood of agreeing upon which patients are to be placed in that category. By the same token, a diagnostic label cannot be useful unless a generally uniform set of characteristics can be inferred to be present. Classification itself accomplishes little, but there is strong feeling that it is fundamental for further work in epidemiology, treatment, and prognosis.