Psychiatric expert opinion in case of early retirement - How reliable?

The study provides first data on reliability of expert psychiatric opinion under regulations of the German state run pension scheme. 22 experienced psychiatrists judged very heterogeneously on a hypothetical case suffering from recurrent depression of moderate severity. Diagnosis according to ICD-10 led to six different diagnoses. 32% produced the most probable ICD-10 diagnosis, 86% a second diagnosis and 32% a third. In their final socio-medical verdict eight experts found an early retirement on medical grounds to be unjustified, four experts thought the insured member incapable of working at all and ten believed she was able to work 4-6 hours a day. Contrary to wide held believes concerning "lax" psychiatric experts our sample revealed the experts to be "tough". This high variability of expert opinions is, however, unacceptable for members of the German state-run pensions schemes.