The Importance of Conducting Practice-oriented Research with Underserved Populations.

There has been a growing emphasis on dissemination of empirically supported treatments. Dissemination, however, should not be restricted to treatment. It can and, in the spirit of the scientific-practitioner model, should also involve research. Because it focuses on the investigation of clinical routine as it takes place in local settings and because it can involve the collaboration of several stakeholders, practice-oriented research (POR) can be viewed as an optimal research method to be disseminated. POR has the potential of addressing particularly relevant gaps of knowledge and action when implemented in regions of the world that have limited resources for or experiences with empirical research, and/or in clinical settings that are serving clinical populations who are not typically receiving optimal mental care services - specifically, individuals in rural and inner cities that have limited economic and social resources. The establishment and maintenance of POR in such regions and/or settings, however, come with specific obstacles and challenges. Integrating the experiences acquired from research conducted in various continents (Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America), the goal of this paper is to describe some of these challenges, strategies that have been implemented to address them, as well as new possible directions to facilitate the creation and growth of POR. It also describes how these challenges and ways to deal with them can provide helpful lessons for already existing POR infrastructures.

Assessment of clinical information: Comparison of the validity of a Structured Clinical Interview (the SCID) and the Clinical Diagnostic Interview.

Adaptive functioning is a key aspect of psychiatric diagnosis and assessment in research and practice. This study compared adaptive functioning validity ratings from Structured Clinical Interviews (SCIDs, symptom-focused structured diagnostic interviews), and Clinical Diagnostic Interviews (CDIs, systematic diagnostic interviews modeling naturalistic clinical interactions focusing on relational narratives). Two hundred forty-five patients (interviewed by two independent interviewers) and their interviewers completed the Clinical Data Form which assesses adaptive functioning and clinical information. Both interviews converged strongly with patient-reports, with no significant differences in validity of the interviews in measuring global and specific domains of adaptive functioning variables. Findings suggest that CDIs provide adaptive functioning data comparable to SCIDs (often considered "gold standard" for assessment but difficult to use in practice) and have important implications for bridging the research-practice gap. By incorporating clinicians' everyday methods, CDIs yield information that is psychometrically sound for empirical investigation, diagnostically practical, and clinically meaningful and valid.

The vicissitudes of conducting psychodynamic research in a naturalistic setting.

This article reports on our experiences conducting naturalistic research as clinician-researchers in a training setting within a public safety-net hospital. The naturalistic, practice-based context has presented various challenges to the research process, including the following: supporting research with limited finances, establishing continuity of research personnel, designating time for research within an intensive clinical training program, responding to difficulties obtaining data, seeking consultation for advanced data analysis, organizing the writing process, and determining order of authorship. In addition, in mixed-methods research of psychodynamic psychotherapy, each of these challenges has interacted with the inherent challenges of qualitative research. We describe the systemic and project-specific challenges of conducting such research, as well as practical strategies that we have used to overcome them, with the aim of helping other clinician-researchers facilitate naturalistic research. The challenges reflect the problem of being "stuck" in the gap that this special section of Psychotherapy is examining, although the strategies serve as optimistic reminders that this type of work is indeed possible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Validity of prototype diagnosis for mood and anxiety disorders.

CONTEXT With growing recognition that most forms of psychopathology are best represented as dimensions or spectra, a central question becomes how to implement dimensional diagnosis in a way that is empirically sound and clinically useful. Prototype matching, which involves comparing a patient's clinical presentation with a prototypical description of the disorder, is an approach to diagnosis that has gained increasing attention with forthcoming revisions to both the DSM and the International Classification of Diseases. OBJECTIVE To examine prototype diagnosis for mood and anxiety disorders. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS In the first study, we examined clinicians' DSM-IV and prototype diagnoses with their ratings of the patients' adaptive functioning and patients' self-reported symptoms. In the second study, independent interviewers made prototype diagnoses following either a systematic clinical interview or a structured diagnostic interview. A third interviewer provided independent ratings of global adaptive functioning. Patients were recruited as outpatients (study 1; N = 84) and from primary care clinics (study 2; N = 143). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Patients' self-reported mood, anxiety, and externalizing symptoms along with independent clinical ratings of adaptive functioning. RESULTS Clinicians' prototype diagnoses showed small to moderate correlations with patient-reported psychopathology and performed as well as or better than DSM-IV diagnoses. Prototype diagnoses from independent interviewers correlated on average r = .50 and showed substantial incremental validity over DSM-IV diagnoses in predicting adaptive functioning. CONCLUSIONS Prototype matching is a viable alternative for psychiatric diagnosis. As in research on personality disorders, mood and anxiety disorder prototypes outperformed DSM-IV decision rules in predicting psychopathology and global functioning. Prototype matching has multiple advantages, including ease of use in clinical practice, reduced artifactual comorbidity, compatibility with naturally occurring cognitive processes in diagnosticians, and ready translation into both categorical and dimensional diagnosis.

Agreement between clinician and patient ratings of adaptive functioning and developmental history.

OBJECTIVE: Psychiatric researchers rely heavily on patient report data for clinical research. However, patient reports are prone to defensive and self-presentation biases. Recent research using practice networks has relied on clinician reports, and both forensic and personality disorder researchers have recently turned to quantified data from clinically expert observers as well. However, critics have raised legitimate concerns about the reliability and validity of data from clinician informants. The aim of this study was to assess the validity and diagnostic efficiency of clinician reports of their patients' adaptive functioning and developmental histories, using patient reports as the comparative standard traditionally used in psychiatric research. METHOD: Eighty-four clinicians and their patients completed a clinical data form designed to assess a range of patient functioning, clinical history, and developmental relationship variables used in multiple clinician report studies. The authors correlated clinician and patient reports across a number of clinically relevant adaptive functioning variables and calculated diagnostic efficiency statistics for a range of clinical history variables, including suicide attempts, hospitalizations, arrests, interpersonal conflicts affecting employment, and childhood physical and sexual abuse. RESULTS: Across variables, patient-therapist correlations (0.40-0.66) and overall correct classification statistics (0.74-0.96) were high. CONCLUSIONS: The data demonstrate that clinicians' judgments about their patients' functioning and histories agree with patients' self-reports and that in areas of discrepancy, clinicians tend to make appropriately conservative judgments in the absence of clear data. These findings suggest that quantified clinical judgment provides a vast untapped potential for large-sample research on psychopathology and treatment.