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Regulatory Disorders SCA322. Feeding Problems of Childhood SCA323. 2 Enuresis SCA324. Sleep Disorders SCA325. Attachment Disorders SCA326. 3 Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) not otherwise specified • Other Disorders SCA327. Gender Identity Disorders Case Illustrations of the PDM Profile with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Disorders The Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders in Infancy and Early Childhood • Introduction • Overview of Primary Mental Health Diagnoses in Infancy and Early Childhood • Primary Diagnosis — Axis I • Interactive Disorders IEC101.

Over the past 30 years or so, in the hope of developing an adequate empirical basis for diagnosis and treatment, the mental health field has progressively narrowed its perspective, focusing more and more on simple symptom clusters. The whole person has been less visible than the various disorder constructs on which researchers can find agreement. Recent reviews of this effort have raised the possibility that such a strategy was misguided. Ironically, emerging evidence suggests that oversimplifying mental health phenomena in the service of attaining consistency of description (reliability) and capacity to evaluate treatment empirically (validity) may have compromised the laudable goal of a more scientifically sound understanding of mental health and psychopathology.

663). Allen Frances, Chair of the DSM-IV American Psychiatric Association Task Force, recently acknowledged that the desired reliability, especially among practicing clinicians, has not been obtained (Spiegel, 2005). Therefore, the laudatory goal of constructing an evidence-based diagnostic system may have led to a tendency to overstep the existing evidence, to make overly narrow observations, and, in the process, to compromise the important goal of classifying mental health and mental health disorders according to their naturally occurring patterns.