Contemporary Psychopathology Diagnosis

Diagnosis and classification for mental disorder are in flux. This transition has downstream consequences on the nature of clinical assessment in research and treatment settings. We begin this chapter by describing the prevailing categorical rubrics, which are the predominant guide to clinical assessment worldwide. These systems, despite their popularity, suffer from serious defects, which have prompted the development of alternate frameworks for conceptualization and assessment of psychopathology. We focus the remainder of the chapter on two prominent contenders to supplement, and perhaps eventually supplant, traditional categorical models. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology is an empirically derived system of the phenotypic dimensions of psychopathology and the Research Domain Criteria represent a biologically oriented approach to understanding risk processes implicated in mental disorder. We describe the promise and challenges facing these two emerging systems, and we speculate about how they will shape the future of clinical assessment.