Screening individuals with intellectual disability for psychiatric disorders: comparison of four measures

Convergences and divergences between four of the most commonly used checklists for psychiatric disorders (the Reiss Screen, The Mini PAS-ADD, the DASH-II, and the ADD) were examined. We screened 181 individuals with intellectual disability for psychiatric disorders with the four checklists and compared the results on the checklists. The concordance of the overall scores on the four checklists was high; but the agreement on specific psychiatric disorders was limited. The results indicate that the checklists are useful as general indicators of psychiatric disorders, but are of less value for specifying the nature of the disorders in individuals with intellectual disability.