The proposed DSM-5 will, apparently, include 11 criteria (www.dsm5.org), which may be unnecessarily long – both in terms of criteria and time required. Two current measures -the FTND (5 items) and the HSI [23] (2 items from the FTND) – are shorter, and have good reliability and validity. Importantly, both are amenable to rapid self-administration, so take considerably less time than a DSM-IV assessment. Thus, for clinicians to use longer instruments such as ones based on the DSM, the instruments will have the burden of showing incremental validity or utility over briefer ones, and most data suggest this is not the case (e.g., [7, 28–30]). ○A tobacco dependence diagnostic measure should be both reliable and valid, allowing meaningful prediction of: future likelihood or ability to quit smoking successfully; heaviness of present and future use; response to smoking cessation treatment; and harm or costs incurred by tobacco use, including occupational, social, health and psychological or psychiatric harms.
