Chunk #69 — Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology
We have presented an argument for describing psychopathology in terms of homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction, thus replacing the ill-fitting syndrome approach. We next consider three obvious concerns relevant to this proposal. First, can one describe psychopathology as comprehensively if one does not consider syndromes? That is, is an essential element of a given form of dysfunction likely to be missed if one does not consider full syndromes? Second, is description in terms of homogeneous dimensions useful? Does one lose the descriptive and communicative utility of the DSM approach? Third, is our approach parsimonious, or are we proposing an unwieldy, overly complex system that would require clinicians to assess across far too many dimensions of functioning? We address each issue in turn.
