Prior Funding

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.