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Journal of Personality Disorders. 3(1), 10-18, 1989
< 1989 The Guilford Press
THE REVISED DIAGNOSTIC INTERVIEW
FOR BORDERLINES: DISCRIMINATING BPD
FROM OTHER AXIS II DISORDERS
Mary C. Zanarini, EdD, John G. Gunderson, MD,Frances R. Frankenburg, MD, and Deborah L. Chauncey, AB
The Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB) was revised to
sharpen its ability to discriminate between clinically diagnosed
borderline patients and patients with other types of Axis II
clinical diagnoses. The discriminant power of both the revised
DIB (DIB-R) and the DIB itself was then tested in a sample of 237 inpatients and outpatients given an Axis II diagnosis by
their therapists. The DIB-R was administered blind to clinical
diagnosis, while a DIB score was independently derived from
DIB-R and other data using a predetermined scoring algorithm. At a cutoff of 8, the DIB-R had a sensitivity of .82,
a specificity of .80, a positive predictive power of .74, and a
negative predictive power of .87. Overall, these conditional
probabilities compare favorably to those obtained for the DIB at its standard cutoff of 7: sensitivity .97, specificity .27, positive predictive power .47, and negative predictive power
.93. They also compare favorably with those obtained in
studies that used semistructured or self-report instruments based on DSM-III or DSM-III-R criteria for BPD.
There are currently five diagnostic instruments designed solely to identify patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD): the Diagnostic In terview for Borderlines (DIB) (Gunderson, Kolb, St Austin, 1981), the Bor derline Personality Scale (BPS) (Perry & Cooper, 1985), the Schedule for
Borderline Personalities (SBP) (which is the second half of the Schedule for
Interviewing Borderlines, or SIB) (Baron & Gruen, 1980), the Borderline
Syndrome Index (BSI) (Conte, Plutchik, Karasu, & Jerrett, 1980), and the Combined Criteria Instrument (CCI) (Nurnberg, Hurt, Feldman, & Suh, 1987). Although each of these instruments attempts to identify clinically
diagnosed borderline patients using criteria sets that are somewhat differ
ent than that of DSM-III, four different formats are used. The DIB is a
semistructured interview, the BPS and the SBP are structured interviews,
the BSI is a self-report questionnaire, and the CCI is a checklist that is rated
after an unstructured clinical interview.
From the Psychosocial Research Program. McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts: and the
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Boston,...