19/07/2014
Assen Jablensky, Winthrop Professor of Psychiatry, University of Western Australia, is one of the Discussants at the upcoming RDoC Workshop. As part of his opening statement, he will argue that:
"The rationale of the NIMH initiative to propose the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project is to create a strategic science alternative to the current DSM/ICD classification of psychiatric disorders.
The “seven pillars” of RDoC are: primacy of translational research; integration of neuroscience and behavioural science; a quantitative dimensional approach to psychopathology; development of instruments allowing measurement of the entire range of variation from normal to abnormal; sampling strategies unbiased by DSM/ICD diagnoses; and an evidence-based selection of ‘units of analysis’ or ‘constructs’ for the conceptual model. These are appealing strengths of the RDoC design which aims to cut across the conventional diagnostic boundaries in order to reveal unexpected patterns of associations with symptoms, personality traits and behaviour.
Yet there are caveats to this approach. Patients entering the psychiatrist’s office present with their phenotype and not with their genotype or biosignature. It is unlikely that the evaluation of their stories would evade the necessity of a first-line phenomenological approach and of ‘pattern recognition’ of the clinical syndrome. Thus, both categories and dimensions are likely to continue co-existing as two sides of the same coin."
Don't miss this opportunity to be informed about this exciting initiative that is already influencing NIMH funding in cognitive neuroscience research into mental health. This perspective is transformative of the way we conceptualise typical and atypical development and how we study it in the future.