What do clinicians treat: Diagnoses or symptoms? The incremental validity of a symptom-based, dimensional characterization of emotional disorders in predicting medication prescription patterns.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Although practice guidelines are based on disorders specified in diagnostic manuals, such as the DSM, practitioners appear to follow symptoms when making treatment decisions. Psychiatric medication is generally prescribed in a transdiagnostic manner, further highlighting how symptoms, not diagnoses, often guide clinical practice. A quantitative approach to nosology promises to provide better guidance as it describes psychopathology dimensionally and its organization reflects patterns of covariation among symptoms.

Aim

To investigate whether a quantitative classification of emotional disorders can account for naturalistic medication prescription patterns better than traditional diagnoses.

Methods

Symptom dimensions and DSM diagnoses of emotional disorders, a

SUBMITTER: Waszczuk MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5643213 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature