Designed to evaluate the usefulness of the BIOSIS PREVIEWS database when searching the psychiatric literature, this study compared the effectiveness of this online database with the effectiveness of two other computerized databases, MEDLINE and PsycINFO (Psychological Abstracts), which psychiatric researchers and clinicians usually rely on when engaged in bibliographical retrieval of psychiatric/medical literature. Two strategies were used. First, 12 items were randomly selected from the titles of recently published articles (1983-April 1988) in the psychiatric literature. Each term was searched in BIOSIS, MEDLINE, and PsycINFO to determine the potential usefulness of BIOSIS in psychiatry when compared to the other two databases. In the second search strategy, six of the original terms were individually combined with other terms commonly found in the literature. When the total citation output on these combination terms was compared among the three databases, it was found that BIOSIS PREVIEWS was the most productive in the number of citations retrieved from the search terms selected for this study. These search results indicate the efficacy of the BIOSIS PREVIEWS database for psychiatric research and its potential usefulness as an adjunct to comprehensive multi-database search strategies, particularly when comprehensive literature retrieval is desired. Two tables display tabulations of the numbers of citations retrieved from each of the three databases. (7 references) (CGD)