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Symptom networks and psychiatric categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2010

Nick Haslam
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne, Department of Psychology, Parkville VIC 3010, Australia. nhaslam@unimelb.edu.auhttp://www.psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff/HaslamN.html

Abstract

The network approach to psychiatric phenomena has the potential to clarify and enhance psychiatric diagnosis and classification. However, its generally well-justified anti-essentialism views psychiatric disorders as invariably fuzzy and arbitrary, and overlooks the likelihood that the domain includes some latent categories. Network models misrepresent these categories, and fail to recognize that some comorbidity may represent valid co-occurrence of discrete conditions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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