What Is Another Way To Classify Psychiatric Diagnoses?
A considerable amount of recent research has focused specifically on whether psychiatric disorders are best classified dimensionally. Some clinical investigators believe that a dimensional approach (which calls upon new statistical methods to examine patterns of symptom co-occurrence) could help take into account biological relationships as well as a common underlying genetic predispositions yet to be discovered among research subjects. Co-occurring diagnoses might best be explained by the presence of common, shared symptoms that are linked and exist along a continuum. What Are The Advantages of a Dimensional Diagnostic System? Data derived from these models of patterns of co-occurrence among bipolar spectrum conditions in childhood (e.g. ADHD, OCD, separation anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and others) may help determine whether they are, in fact, indicators of a coherent underlying domain, rather than separate conditions with little or no relationship. The promise of
