Samuel Barry Guze (October 18, 1923 – July 19, 2000) was an American

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

, medical

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

, and

researcher Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

. A graduate of

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

and

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with or ...

, he was an influential psychiatrist. He worked at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for most of his career.Fatemi; Clayton, p.738 In addition to twice serving as department chair, he led the School of Medicine as Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs (1971-1989). Along with

Eli Robins Eli Robins (1921 Texas – 1994 Washington) was an American psychiatrist who played a pivotal role in establishing the way mental disorders are researched and diagnosed today. Early career Robins finished his medical training and residencies at Ha ...

, George Winokur and others, Guze advanced psychiatry by establishing criteria for diagnosis. A short paper by Guze and Robins contained a discussion of

validity Validity or Valid may refer to: Science/mathematics/statistics: * Validity (logic), a property of a logical argument * Scientific: ** Internal validity, the validity of causal inferences within scientific studies, usually based on experiments ** ...

from a medical perspective. and came up with five phases of research that demonstrated that a diagnostic concept represented a disease.Oxford Uni These five phases were: clinical description, laboratory studies, delimitation from other disorders, follow-up studies and family studies. While previously two psychiatrists might interview the same patient and propose differing diagnoses, the Guze system led to great leaps in diagnostic "reliability", that is, different physicians would agree more often on what the diagnosis really was. Following publication of what came to be known as the

Feighner Criteria The Feighner Criteria are a set of influential psychiatric diagnostic criteria developed at Washington University in St. Louis between the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The criteria are named after a psychiatric paper published in 1972 of which J ...

, in 1980 he helped compile Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (3rd edition). The Feighner et al publication became a "citation classic," cited 4,000 times. Diagnostic reliability is still an essential component to modern versions of the Manual. He was also among the first psychiatrists to study twins as a way to investigate the role of heredity in mental illness and contributed to the knowledge of genetic vulnerability to

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol (drug), alcohol that results in significant Mental health, mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognize ...

and

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...

Papers

Feighner, JP, Robins, E, Guze, SB, Woodruff, RA Jr, Winokur, G, Munoz, R. Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1972; 26:57-63 Robins, E and Guze, SB. Establishment of diagnostic validity in psychiatric illness: its application to schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry 1970; 126:983-987
Publication list from PubMed

Books

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References

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Footnotes

1923 births 2000 deaths American psychiatrists 20th-century American physicians Members of the National Academy of Medicine Washington University in St. Louis alumni Washington University in St. Louis faculty Washington University School of Medicine alumni Washington University School of Medicine faculty City College of New York alumni {{US-psychiatrist-stub