Diagnostic validity of the MINI-KID disorder classifications in specialized child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics in Sweden

BACKGROUND: Missing diagnostic information often results poor accuracy of the clinical diagnostic decision process. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for Children and Adolescents (MINI-KID) is a short standardized diagnostic interview and covers a rather broad range of diagnoses applicable to children and adolescents. MINI-KID disorder classifications have shown test-retest reliability and validity comparable to other standardized diagnostic interviews and is claimed to be a useful tool for diagnostic screening in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric care. The concordance between the Swedish language version of the MINI-KID Interview and LEAD (Longitudinal, Expert, All Data) research diagnoses was studied in secondary child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient care. METHODS: MINI-KID interviews were performed for 101 patients, boys n = 50, girls n = 51, aged 4 to 18 years. The duration of the interview was on average 46 min, the child/adolescent participating together with the parent(s) in most cases. The seven most prevalent diagnoses were included in the analyses. RESULTS: The average overall percent agreement (OPA) between MINI-KID and LEAD was 79.5%, the average percent positive agreement (PPA) 35.4 and the average percent negative agreement (NPA) 92.7. OPA was highest for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) (0.89), Tic disorders (0.88) and Pervasive developmental disorders (0.81). There were similar results in diagnostic agreement comparing the two versions: the standard MINI-KID and MINI-KID for parents. The specific screening questions in MINI-KID resulted in additional preliminary diagnoses compared with the regular initial clinical assessment. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, there was an acceptable agreement between MINI-KID disorder classifications and research diagnoses according to LEAD. The standardized interview MINI-KID could be considered as a tool with the possibility to give valuable information in the diagnostic process in child and adolescent care which is similar to the setting in the present study.