The predominant, categorical system used to classify and diagnose psychiatric disorders suffers from several critical scientific limitations, including extensive comorbidity, unreliability, and disorder heterogeneity. As such, clinical psychological scientists are increasingly moving away from this traditional, categorical system, and toward empirically-based, dimensional, and transdiagnostic alternatives such as the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP; Kotov et al., 2017). The HiTOP model is based on quantitative studies of disorder co-occurrence or comorbidity; but as a dimensional model, normative personality also serves as a “fundamental base” for the HiTOP structure (Widiger et al., 2019). However, the HiTOP model has been primarily built on adult samples, and the degree to which it may generalize to developing populations is still being understood. In the present dissertation, I use personality as a framework for understanding the psychological content of a hierarchical, dimensional model of psychopathology as it applies to youth. Study 1 takes a multi-stage construct validation approach to understanding relational aggression, a developmentally relevant psychopathology component with proposed connections to both normative and pathological personality. Study 2 examines the structure of seven common psychiatric disorders and their associations with facet-level personality traits. Study 3 then evaluates the longitudinal relationships between these lower-order personality traits and psychopathology spectra across the transition to adolescence. Collectively, these studies suggest that the structural and external validity of psychopathology dimensions have subtle differences across age groups. In addition, these studies support the conceptualization of psychiatric illness and normative personality as either being part of a shared continuum or, at minimum, sharing common causal antecedents.

Creator

• Brandes, Cassandra Margaret

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-t5bj-c376

Subject

• Personality psychology
• Clinical psychology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16582
• etdadmin_upload_986185

Keyword

• psychopathology
• mental health
• diagnosis
• structural equation modeling
• adolescence
• personality

Date created

• 2022-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright