The use of Autism Mental Status exam in an Italian sample. A brief report

The Autism Mental Status Exam (AMSE) is an eight-item observational assessment that allows clinicians to observe and document social and communication functioning and behavioral features in children during a clinical evaluation. Previous findings indicated a high classification accuracy of the AMSE, when compared to ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule), administered to a high-risk population suspected to have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study reports the data obtained through the administration of AMSE to a sample of 98 Italian patients (11 females and 87 males) with a diagnosis of ASD formulated according to the diagnostic criteria of the DSM 5. All subjects were administered AMSE, ADOS and ADI-R. Results show an acceptable internal consistency of the instrument (alpha = .63) and statistically significant correlations between AMSE total score and the ADOS scores. Preliminary findings suggest that the AMSE might provide a rapid and reliable observational assessment in a population with a suspect of ASD.