title: An alternative hierarchical organization of the mental disorders of the DSM-IV.
abstract: With the approaching publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), alternative organizations of the DSM (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) categories have been proposed. This article compares several published alternative organizations to clinicians' organization of the DSM-IV categories. As demonstrations of their organization of DSM-IV categories, psychologists and psychiatrists sorted 66 DSM-IV diagnostic categories into groups of similar diagnoses and then made progressively larger and smaller groups of diagnoses or placed similar groups next to each other on a table. Hierarchical agglomerative data analysis of clinicians' individual sortings showed that clinicians retained many lower level DSM-IV categories (e.g., anxiety disorders, mood disorders), but not the higher level DSM-IV categories (e.g., Axis I vs. Axis II). Instead, at the highest hierarchical level, clinicians' categories resembled the structure of the first edition of the DSM (American Psychiatric Association, 1952), which followed clinicians' diagnostic decision-making scheme, dividing mental disorders into organic versus nonorganic and then psychotic versus neurotic disorders. At minimum, these data suggest a DSM organization that makes sense to clinicians.
authors: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06513, USA. elizabeth.flanagan@yale.edu
authors: Elizabeth H
authors: EH
authors: Flanagan
authors: Jared
authors: J
authors: Keeley
authors: Roger K
authors: RK
authors: Blashfield
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011361:Professional Competence; D012720:Severity of Illness Index