title: [Clinical schizophrenia phenotypes: categories vs dimensions].
abstract: Diagnosing schizophrenia has been problematic since the earliest clinical descriptions of the disorder In absence of available biological markers for diagnosing schizophrenia, descriptive psychopathology continues to be the basis for diagnosis and treatment. However, the existence of disagreements in the concept of schizophrenia is reflected by the large number of competing diagnostic systems that have been proposed. Two main putative factors could explain variability among schizophrenia definitions: the existence of different disorders within the schizophrenia construct, and the dimensional nature of the construct that hardly can be operationalized in terms of categorical definitions. In this report, we analyse different clinical models of schizophrenia ranging from historical to present ones. It is concluded that empirical data fit better with a dimensional view of schizophrenia than with a categorical one, and given the continuous distribution of the schizophrenia-related variables, it may be arbitrary where cutpoints are made between schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic psychoses. However, categorical and dimensional representations of schizophrenia are not antagonistic but rather complementary and combining the two approaches seems to be a useful method for analyzing the heterogeneity of the disease.
authors.affiliation: AP-HP, hôpital Henri-Mondor-Albert-Chenevier, pôle de psychiatrie, Inserm U955, équipe 15, IMRB; université Paris-Est, 94000 Creteil, France. franck.schurhoff@inserm.fr
authors.forename: Franck
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schürhoff
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*