APA Dictionary of Psychology

a modification of the Feighner criteria for diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, expanding the number of disorders from the original 15 to 25. It focused on present or past episodes of illness and provided inclusion and exclusion criteria for diagnosis of the different disorders. Developed to increase diagnostic reliability, the RDC became an important basis for the development of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–III, 1980), which was a major departure from prior editions’ largely psychoanalytic approach to mental disorder. [published in 1978 by U.S. psychiatrists Robert L. Spitzer (1932–  ) and Eli Robins (1921–1995) and U.S. clinical psychologist Jean Endicott (1936–  )]