Feighner Criteria

The Feighner Criteria is the informal name given to a diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatry research. The criteria were first presented in a scientific paper published in 1972 of which John Feighner was the principle author. Fourteen conditions were defined including primary affective disorders, schizophrenia, anxiety neurosis and antisocial personality disorder. In the early 1970s homosexuality was considered a psychiatric illness by the medical community, and was also included as one of the 14 conditions. The criteria were expanded in the publication of the Research Diagnostic Criteria on which many of the criteria of DSM-III were based.