Can network analysis transform psychopathology?☆
Section snippets
Can network analysis transform psychopathology?
Three years ago the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; APA, 2013) amidst a storm of controversy. Immediately prior to the unveiling of the new manual, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) announced that the DSM would no longer furnish the requisite framework for grant proposals submitted to NIMH (Insel, 2013). The institute, he said, would be “re-orienting its research
The network approach to psychopathology
The psychometrician, Denny Borsboom, and his colleagues have proposed a radically different explanation for syndromic coherence (e.g., Borsboom and Cramer, 2013, Borsboom, 2008, Borsboom et al., 2011a, Borsboom et al., 2011b, Cramer et al., 2010a, Schmittmann et al., 2013). According to their network1
Key concepts in network analysis
Networks consist of nodes and edges. Nodes represent the objects of study, and edges represent the connections between them. In psychopathology networks, nodes represent symptoms, and edges represent associations between symptoms.
Networks can consist of either weighted edges or unweighted edges. An unweighted edge merely signifies that two symptoms are connected, whereas a weighted edge signifies the magnitude of the connection (e.g., a Pearson correlation coefficient), represented by thickness
Node centrality metrics
Traditional categorical approaches to psychiatric diagnosis emphasize hallmark symptoms that are strongly associated with a single disorder, but seldom associated with other disorders. Some nosologists have proposed that we purify diagnostic criteria sets of nonspecific symptoms appearing in many disorders, leaving only those strongly associated with the syndrome (e.g., Spitzer, First, & Wakefield, 2007). This recommendation was especially an issue for specialists struggling to make sense of
Types of networks
Psychopathologists have computed several types of networks, most concerning cross-sectional, observational symptom data. Although cross-sectional data cannot alone confirm causality among symptoms, network analysts have devised methods that can bring us closer to characterizing mental disorders as causal systems (McNally, 2012).
Strengths and limitations of network analysis?
A potentially fatal objection to latent variable approaches to psychopathology, whether construed categorically or dimensionally, is their failure to satisfy the axiom of local independence requisite for justifying an inference to an underlying entity as the common cause of symptom emergence and covariance (Borsboom and Cramer, 2013, Borsboom, 2008). Indeed, it seems obvious that causal connections abound between symptoms (e.g., sleep loss causing fatigue; phobic fear causing avoidance
Future directions
The aim of research in abnormal psychology is to discover the causes of mental health problems, thereby enhancing the efficacy of prevention and treatment. The field of experimental psychopathology remains at the forefront of these efforts (van den Hout, Engelhard, & McNally, in press). However, for obvious ethical reasons, many questions concerning causality are unanswerable with experimental methods. Complementing experimental approaches, network analysis aims to elucidate the causal
References (86)
A cognitive approach to panic
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1986)- et al.
Networks containing negative ties
Social Networks
(2014) Centrality in social networks
Social Networks
(1978/1979)- et al.
Network destabilization and transition in depression: New methods for studying the dynamics of therapeutic change
Clinical Psychology Review
(2015) - et al.
Medical update for children with Down syndrome for the pediatrician and family practitioner
Advances in Pediatrics
(2012) The SSQ model of schizophrenic prodromal unfolding revised: An analysis of its causal chains based on the language of directed graphs
European Psychiatry
(2014)- et al.
Anxiety sensitivity, anxiety frequency and the prediction of fearfulness
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1986) - et al.
Network analysis of substance abuse and dependence symptoms
Drug and Alcohol Dependence
(2016) - et al.
Deconstructing the construct: A network perspective on psychological phenomena
New Ideas in Psychology
(2013) - et al.
Saving PTSD from itself in DSM-V
Journal of Anxiety Disorders
(2007)
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
On models of personality structure
European Journal of Personality
Conventional wisdom on measurement: A structural equation perspective
Psychological Bulletin
Association of symptom network structure with the course of longitudinal depression
JAMA Psychiatry
Psychometric perspectives on diagnostic systems
Journal of Clinical Psychology
Network analysis: An integrative approach to the structure of psychopathology
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
The small world of psychopathology
PLoS ONE
Why g is not an adaptation: A comment on Kanazawa (2004)
Psychological Review
Transdiagnostic networks: Commentary on Nolen-Hoeksema and Watkins (2011)
Perspectives on Psychological Science
The two disciplines of psychology, or: The disunity of psychology as a working hypothesis
The theoretical status of latent variables
Psychological Review
The network structure of psychopathology in a community sample of preadolescents
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
A prospective study of how symptoms in a network predict the onset of depression
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
Realism, anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds
Philosophical Studies
Revealing the dynamic network structure of the Beck Depression Inventory II
Psychological Medicine
A network approach to psychopathology: New insights into clinical longitudinal data
PLoS One
The pathoplasticity of dysphoric episodes: Differential impact of stressful life events on the pattern of depressive symptom inter-correlations
Psychological Medicine
Measurable like temperature or mereological like flocking? On the nature of personality traits
European Journal of Personality
Comorbidity: A network perspective
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Complex realities require complex theories: Refining and extending the network approach to mental disorders
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
On the nature and direction of relationships between constructs and measures
Psychological Methods
qgraph: Network visualization of relationships in psychometric data
Journal of Statistical Software
ICD, DSM and the Tower of Babel
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
ICD-11 should not repeat the mistakes made by DSM-5
British Journal of Psychiatry
Problematic assumptions have slowed down depression research: Why symptoms, not syndromes are the way forward
Frontiers in Psychology
From loss to loneliness: The relationship between bereavement and depressive symptoms
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Commentary: “Consistent superiority of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors over placebo in reducing depressed mood in patients with major depression.”
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Regularization paths for generalized linear models via coordinate descent
Journal of Statistical Software
The impact of individual depressive symptoms on impairment of psychosocial functioning
PLoS ONE
Depression is more than the sum score of its parts: Individual DSM symptoms have different risk factors
Psychological Medicine
Graph drawing by force-directed placement
Software - Practice and Experience
Relative importance for linear regression in R: The package relaimpo
Journal of Statistical Software
Cited by (568)
Exploring the complex interrelation between depressive symptoms, risk, and protective factors: A comprehensive network approach
2024, Journal of Affective DisordersHazardous drinking in young adults with co-occurring PTSD and psychosis symptoms: A network analysis
2024, Journal of Affective Disorders
- ☆
I thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful, excellent, and very helpful comments. The author has no funding sources to report.