Robert Spitzer (psychiatrist) - Education and Early Years

Education and Early Years

Spitzer was born in White Plains, New York in 1932. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Cornell University and his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 1957. Spitzer wrote an article on Wilhelm Reich's theories in 1953 which the American Journal of Psychiatry declined to publish.

Spitzer served on the four-person United States Steering Committee for the United States–United Kingdom Diagnostic Project, who published their results in 1972. (The most important difference between countries they found was that the concept of schizophrenia used in New York was much broader than the one used in London and included patients who would have been termed manic-depressive or bipolar.) Spitzer co-developed a computer program, Diagno I, in 1968, based on a logical decision tree, that could derive a diagnosis from the scores on a Psychiatric Status Schedule (which he co-published in 1970) and that the Project used to check the consistency of its results.

Spitzer codeveloped the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ), a screening technique used for diagnosing bipolar disorder. He also codeveloped the Patient Health Questionnaire (PRIME-MD) which can be self-administered to find out if one has a mental illness.