AN EMPIRICAL-COMPARISON BETWEEN THE DSM AND PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACHES FOR ASSESSMENT OF CHILD DISORDERS IN CHILDREN ATTENDING OUTPATIENT CLINICS

The DSM and psychodynamic approaches provide different perspectives on child psychiatric diagnoses. Taking advantage of the recent publicati on of a psychodynamically oriented classification of child disorders, correspondences between these approaches were studied in a sample of o utpatient clinic children. Clinician judges and a psychiatric intervie w schedule provided for diagnoses. Classifications of child psychopath ology are still imperfect to a large extent. As a result, statistical comparisons can only yield limited relationships and caution is necess ary when using classification tools. Methodological difficulties notwi thstanding, various associations showed that DSM and psychodynamic con structs, while different, are not entirely independent.