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

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.

Source: Comprehensive Psychiatry - April 18, 2017 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Monika A. Waszczuk, Mark Zimmerman, Camilo Ruggero, Kaiqiao Li, Annmarie MacNamara, Anna Weinberg, Greg Hajcak, David Watson, Roman Kotov Source Type: research