View article

AMP stands for Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Methodik und Dokumentation in der Psychiatrie or, in English, Association for Methodology and Documentation in Psychiatry. It was founded in 1965 by a group of psychiatrists from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to develop a uniform system for the documentation of information which would be useful in both clinical practice and psychopharmacological research. The founders of the AMP had ample experience in documentation systems which was utilized for the establishment of the AMP (pp. 18-27). Although the AMP is not a formal organization but rather a loosely knit association of psychiatrists and psychologists with diverse interests, the group has been able to develop, over the years, a contemporary system for the documentation of relevant anamnestic, psychopathological and somatic data in a computer-readable format [2, 3, 4]. The system is particularly suited for constructing a large and uniform data base for the monitoring of psychiatric patients and for providing prompt electronic data analyses for single and multicenter clinical trials. It is a system which could serve as the basis for the development of international standards in psychiatric diagnosis and research. By 1971, the Association had developed a manual for the initial version of the system (AMP-I) in which its structure and content were described [104]. The manual served to introduce and instruct the neophyte in the skills necessary for the standardized application of the system. Following the publication of the second edition of the Manual [105], some of the shortcomings of the system were identified and a number of committees were …