An Evolutionary Theory of Diagnostic Text Development

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Abstract

In the field of behavioral health, as well as the many related disciplines in which health practitioners use diagnostic criteria to arrive at a differential mental disorder diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is regarded as the primary, authoritative information source for use in the detection of psychopathology and in the determination of treatment recommendations. This study proposes that the DSM is a taxonomic system that can be modeled through network analytic methods. Evolutionary frameworks are used to propose a theory of diagnostic text development. To empirically support theoretical claims taxonomic networks are derived from two editions of the DSM.

Author

• Jeffrey D Proulx, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign