Key takeaways
- DSM has expanded over the years, and now 50% of all Americans have at some point in their lives had a mental disorder (Kessler epidemiology).
- Have we actually discovered more conditions “in nature” or are we simply sub-typing and expanding into everyday life? Blurring the boundary between distress and disorder?
- An advantage of the current system with specific diagnostic criteria is improved Reliability of diagnosis, and a Lingua Franca despite theoretical differences between clinicians.
- Social constructivism critique: disorders are affected by clinicians themselves. Also mentioned in Why we need to get better at critiquing psychiatric diagnosis:
Transclude of block psychiatric-diagnoses-are-not-valid-because-they-are-decided-by-a-committee
Network approach to psychopathology
- Symptoms tend to cluster, why?
- Medical model: they co-occur because of a shared underlying cause, e.g. a latent disorder or brain aberration
- Axiom of local independence not fulfilled, symptoms are causally connected
The episode with a mental disorder represents the activation of causally linked symptom networks