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Clinical validity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

R. E. Kendell
R. E. Kendell*
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh
*
†Address for correspondence: Professor R. E. Kendell, University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh EHI0 5HF.
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Synopsis

Few psychiatric disorders have yet been adequately validated and it is still an open issue whether there are genuine boundaries between the clinical syndromes recognized in contemporary classifications, or between these syndromes and normality. In the long run validation depends on the elucidation of aetiological processes. There are, however, a number of strategies which clinicians could use, but at present rarely do, in order to improve and validate existing classifications. Most of these involve studying populations which have been deliberately chosen to represent a broader grouping than a single diagnostic category, or even a group of related categories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 1989 , pp. 45 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

This paper was originally delivered as the Paul Hoch Award Lecture at the 78th annual meeting of the American Psychopathological Association in New York City on 4 March 1988 It is published in The Validity of Psychiatric Diagnosis (ed. L. N. Robins and J. F. Barrett) American Psychopathological Association Series, Raven Press: New York, 1989.

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