This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

DAVID GRAYSON, PHD
National Health and Medical Research Council Social Psychiatry Research Unit Australian National University GPO Box 4 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1986;43(7):712-713.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Cloninger et al¹ claim convincing evidence that schizophrenia is a discrete clinical disorder. They cite three justifications for their belief: (a) bimodality was obtained in a discriminant function score of symptomatology; (b) on a simple sum of five symptoms, the probability of subsequent diagnosis as schizophrenic was nonlinear, with a sharp increase between one and two symptoms; and (c) only when subjects were dichotomized at the same place on this symptom score between one and two symptoms did a familial relationship in schizophrenia emerge.

The alternative possibility is that schizophrenia is a dimensional illness, with only those at the extreme coming to medical attention. If schizophrenia is a dimensional disorder, rather than a discrete entity, each of the three findings noted above could emerge. The defects in the evidence lie in the choice of symptoms and selection effects in the sample studied.

The simplest way to demonstrate . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?