Open AccessDimensions and the psychosis phenotype
Author(s) -
Allardyce Judith,
Suppes Trisha,
van Os Jim
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of methods in psychiatric research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.275
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1557-0657
pISSN - 1049-8931
DOI - 10.1002/mpr.214
Subject(s) - categorical variable , psychosis , medical diagnosis , psychology , psychopathology , dimension (graph theory) , population , clinical psychology , psychiatric diagnosis , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychiatry , medicine , machine learning , pathology , computer science , mathematics , environmental health , pure mathematics
Abstract In this paper, we discuss the conceptual background for including a dimensional component to the DSM V diagnoses for psychoses. We review the evidence for a continuous distribution of psychosis like symptoms in the general population and summarise the research validating the clinical usefulness of psychopathological dimensions. We conclude that diagnostic models using both categorical and dimensional representations of psychosis have better predictive validity than either model independently. Dimensions do not appear to be diagnosis specific so a flexible scoring of dimensions across all psychotic and major affective disorders may be potentially more informative than a system where categorical diagnoses are kept artificially dimension‐specific. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.