Objective: This study aimed to adapt the Diagnostic Criteria for Psychosomatic
Research-Revised Semi-Structured Interview (DCPR-R-SSI) into Turkish and
assess its psychometric properties.
Method: This study was conducted with two separate samples of patients
diagnosed with psychosomatic disorders between the ages of 18-65 at Gazi
University Psychiatry Clinic. For inter-rater reliability analysis, a sample of 100
participants was evaluated by two raters and kappa coefficient was calculated.
Validity analysis used samples from both patient and community groups. For
criterion validity, the relationship between DCPR diagnoses and the Hospital
Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS), Patient Health Questionnaire 15 (PHQ-
15), Health Anxiety Inventory (HAI) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was
analyzed with the Point Biserial Correlation Coefficient. The distribution of
DCPR diagnoses in the community and hospital samples was analyzed.
Results: The mean age of the sample for inter-rater reliability analysis was
33.5±13.0 years and 55% were female. Kappa values for 14 DCPR-R diagnoses
were between 0.823-0.964. The hospital and community samples included 110
people from the community and 100 from the hospital. In the validity analyses,
Allostatic Overload showed a significant relationship with HADS-Depression,
HADS-Anxiety, PHQ-15 and HAI. Demoralization and Demoralization with
Hopelessness showed a significant relationship with all scales. Type A Behavior
was weakly correlated with all scales, whereas Alexithymia was strongly correlated
with the TAS. The five most common DCPR-R diagnoses were Allostatic
Overload (55.2%), Demoralization (36.1%), Alexithymia (29.0%), Type A
Behavior (27.6%), Irritable Mood (15.7%), Persistent Somatization (11.9%)
and Health Anxiety (10.9%).
Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the Turkish version of DCPR-R is a
valid and reliable measurement tool.
Keywords: Alexithymia, consultation liason psychiatry, conversion, health
anxiety, psychosomatic medicine, somatization