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"New Classification of Bipolar, Depressive, and Anxiety Disorders" Principal Investigator: Dr. Roman Kotov Institution: Stony Brook University The existing psychiatric diagnostic system is a poor guide for treatment of individual patients and for research on these illnesses. This is a serious concern for bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disorders, which are among the leading causes of disability worldwide. The goal of the present study is to develop new diagnoses of these conditions. We analyzed associations among symptoms of these disorders and constructed empirical categories from the ground up. We compared them to existing diagnoses in a sample of 319 psychiatric patients. Participants completed a standard diagnostic interview, a research interview that we developed, several clinical measures, and an electroencephalography (EEG) assessment. New diagnoses were superior to the existing classification in predicting clinical outcomes and neurobiological abnormalities implicated in emotional problems. Overall, we found that the proposed diagnoses are more sound and more useful in practice that the existing categories. This work is expected to open new avenues for improving research procedures, clinical care, and medical education in psychiatry. |
The above project description is supplied by the Principal Investigator |