Psychopathology, Assessment of

Psychopathology can be thought of as the expression of mental impairment in the form of psychological signs and symptoms. Specific disorders subsumed under psychopathology, while having specific signs and symptoms, have as their common thread a significant impairment in mental functioning that causes distress or disability. However, no one sign or symptom is usually sufficient to describe a given mental disorder. Rather, a cluster of related signs and symptoms are necessary that are associated with the distress or disability that is presented. The acquisition of reliable, accurate accounts of those critical features of psychopathology is the goal of any assessment of psychopathology.

Widely known criteria for the various forms of psychopathology appear in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) and the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM). The assessment of psychopathology may at first appear to involve a rather straightforward appraisal of the relative “fit” of these criteria to the particular history and behavioral repertoire of the individual being assessed. This view suggests that appraisal involves little more than decisions about whether one or more sets of these criteria are represented in the information gathered about an individual. If so, the diagnosis (i.e., form of psychopathology) associated with those criteria is assigned to represent the individual's psychological problem(s).

However, the reality is more complicated than the above suggests. Before psychologists can assess the fit of any set of criteria to an individual, they must make a number of decisions regarding the assessment process itself. These include an evaluation of their ability to accurately judge the presence or absence, quality, and quantity of the criteria. In other words, psychologists must evaluate the reliability, validity, and usefulness of the information to be used in assessing the criteria and the context in which the information will be used before the information is accepted for use. Additionally, the perspective taken, for instance, whether the focus is on direct behavioral examples or inferred (i.e., not directly observable) processes, must be taken into account. The ideas and biases of the assessor must be carefully considered. Finally, the information, be it a diagnosis or behavioral description, must be accurately conveyed to the appropriate referring source to actually aid the person being assessed. This has led to the development of a wide range of [Page 809]assessment tools that include unstructured and structured interviews, self-report inventories, measures of cognition, projective techniques, behavioral descriptors, and many more.