Communication and Psychiatric Diagnosis: Tales of Depressive Moods From Two Contexts

Study of communication in the psychiatric diagnostic process requires an examination of the disease constructs guiding this process. Concepts of disorder, when viewed as communicationally constituted, are based on and give rise to assumptions about the nature of clinically useful information. Such assumptions, in turn, serve to structure the role of communication in the process of clinical evaluation. This claim was explored in a study that compared clinical judgments and multiple-time-point self-reports about three depressive mood states (i.e., sadness, irritability, and anhedonia) for seven adolescents diagnosed as clinically depressed according to criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987).