The Diagnostic Assessment of the Spectrum of Health (DASH): Properties, advantages and clinical utility in the context of of structured diagnostic interviews for adults and youth mental health

Authors

• R Choudhari
• E Ballard
• F Belouad
• K Conway
• J Franco
• K Georgiades
• G Salum
• P Szatmari
• K Merikangas

Abstract

Structured psychiatric interviews represent the diagnostic gold standard in psychiatric research. However, there are numerous challenges to their widespread administration, particularly in clinical settings, including logistical burdens like cost and training requirements, applicability to either adults or children but not both, and an incomplete range of disorders included. Furthermore, rigid adherence to diagnostic criteria eludes sub-threshold symptoms that may affect impairment and distress. Finally, few interviews consider physical health features that are often associated with mental health.
Considering these limitations of existing interviews, the Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch of the NIMH has developed the Diagnostic Assessment of the Spectrum of Health (DASH): an open-access modularized computerized psychiatric interview that builds upon previous structured diagnostic tools like the SPIKE, CIDI, DIGS, and KSADS and collects data on the full spectrum of psychopathology in both adults and youth, as well as ancillary information on medical conditions, sleep, headache, and family history, to provide a comprehensive depiction of mental and physical health.
This paper will: (1) review the most used structured and semi-structured interviews in psychiatric epidemiology for adults and youth and compare them to the DASH on logistics of administration, disorders assessed, and diagnostic outputs; and (2) present data comparing the DASH to the SCID, the most common interview for DSM-5, and KSADS in adults and youth in community and clinical samples. This work will provide a broad overview of existing clinical diagnostic tools for mental disorders and the comparative properties, advantages, and utility of the DASH in clinical and research domains.

Scientific Focus Area: Clinical Research

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