The Oxford Handbook of Dimensional Models of Psychopathology (Oxford Library of Psychology)

Prevailing classification systems backed by the American Psychiatric Association (DSM) and World Health Organization (ICD) generally assume that mental health conditions are best represented by discrete entities that are qualitatively distinct from one another and from mental health.These diagnostic categories, such as major depression, antisocial personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, are ubiquitous in research, clinical, training, legal, and public health contexts.Yet they are out of sync with a vast quantity of scientific data on the presentation, causes, and treatments of psychopathology.Empirically speaking, categorical diagnoses tend to be unreliable (over time and across reporters), have fuzzy boundaries with one another and mental health, do not capture many clinical presentations encountered in routine practice, and lack distinctive causes and recommended treatments.Dimensional perspectives recognize the same signs and symptoms as categorical rubrics, but the