Understanding the Emotional Disorders

Abstract

Understanding the Emotional Disorders: A Symptom-Based Approach examines replicable symptom dimensions contained within five adjacent diagnostic classes in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: depressive disorders, bipolar and related disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and trauma- and stressor-related disorders. It reviews several problems and limitations associated with traditional, diagnosis-based approaches to studying psychopathology, and it establishes the theoretical and clinical value of analyzing specific types of symptoms within the emotional disorders. It demonstrates that several of these disorders—most notably, major depression, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder—contain multiple symptom dimensions that clearly can be differentiated from one another. Moreover, these symptom dimensions are highly robust and generalizable and can be identified in multiple types of data, including self-ratings, semistructured interviews, and clinicians’ ratings. Furthermore, individual symptom dimensions often have strikingly different correlates, such as varying levels of criterion validity and diagnostic specificity. It concludes with the development of a more comprehensive, symptom-based model that subsumes various forms of psychopathology—including sleep disturbances, eating- and weight-related problems, personality pathology, psychosis/thought disorder, and hypochondriasis—beyond the emotional disorders.