title: Personal constructs and child psychiatric diagnosis - a pilot study.
abstract: Repertory grid technique is used to study the relationship between construing patients and friends by subjects ranking the same sets of constructs to both sets of elements. Nine subjects completed two repertory grids with (1) 'patients' as elements, and (2) 'friends' as elements. By using the measures of 'Consistiency', and 'Intensity', which are explained, it is shown that subjects were as meaningfully able to construe 'patients' in terms of the friends, as they were in terms of 'patients' constructs. They were not as able to construe 'friends' in terms of 'patient' constructs as they were in terms of the 'friends' constructs. The significance of this is examined in relation to the use of a specialist language within child psychiatric diagnosis.
mesh_terms: D002665:Child Psychiatry; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010865:Pilot Projects