The criteria are named after a psychiatric paper published in 1972 of which John Feighner was the first listed author. It became the most cited article in psychiatry for some time. The development of the criteria had been led by a trio of psychiatrists working together on the project for a
medical model of psychiatric diagnosis since the late 1950s:
Eli Robins,
Samuel Guze and
George Winokur. Fourteen conditions were defined, including primary affective disorders (such as depression),
schizophrenia,
anxiety neurosis and
antisocial personality disorder. The criteria were expanded in the publication of the
Research Diagnostic Criteria on which many of the criteria of the
American Psychiatric Association's
DSM III (1980) were based, which in turn shaped the
World Health Organization's ICD manual. "The historical record shows that the small group of individuals who created the Feighner criteria instigated a paradigm shift that has had profound effects on the course of American and, ultimately, world psychiatry." == See also ==