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Clinicians' conceptualizations of comorbid cases: a test of additive versus nonadditive models
Author(s) -
Keeley Jared,
Blashfield Roger K.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.20713
Subject(s) - psychology , comorbidity , psychopathology , association (psychology) , cognition , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology , psychotherapist
Comorbidity in psychopathology is a common phenomenon. However, little is known about the way in which clinicians think about comorbid cases. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM‐IV‐TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) implies an additive model of concept combination, but studies of human cognition find that individuals often combine concepts in nonadditive ways. In this study, 70 clinicians listed symptoms for three disorders and their combinations. Participants produced nonadditive descriptions, termed overextensions, at significant rates. These results challenge the utility of the implicit additive model of the current DSM. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 66:1–10, 2010.