In their introduction to the special issue on addressing clinical heterogeneity in psychopathology through brain science, Damme and Mittal (see record 2025-40884-001) highlighted the transformative potential of using brain data to uncover variability in mental health diagnoses and their underlying mechanisms. The articles in this issue exemplify this, such as Reimann et al. (see record 2025-40884-008)

Zilcha-Mano (see record 2026-05243-001) provided several important insights relating to our recent special issue on utilizing data from brain science to better manage clinical heterogeneity (Damme & Mittal, 2024) and expanded on these ideas by emphasizing that individualized definitions of what "healthy" is an important consideration as well. We agree that tailoring treatment planning to an individual

Depressive symptoms and sleep problems are detrimental for adolescents, with emotion regulation related to both problems. The present study explores emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the reciprocal associations between depressive symptoms and sleep problems and examines gender differences. A total of 1,535 adolescents (47.4% girls; baseline Mage = 13.19 years) were included in this four-wave

Addressing the persistent heterogeneity in psychopathology, treatment outcomes, and the science-practice gap requires a systematic approach to personalizing psychotherapy. Case conceptualization seeks to understand a patient's unique psychopathology by generating and continuously updating hypotheses about predisposing, precipitating, and maintaining factors. This study introduces a new data-driven

Physical activity has a well-known positive effect on mood and often occurs outside in natural light. The specific effects of natural light exposure on mood are understudied, but clinically significant as it may reflect a widely accessible method to enhance mood. This study thus aimed to disentangle the effects of (a) physical activity and (b) natural light exposure on daily mood. For 2 weeks, 131

Theory and evidence suggest that people attempt suicide to escape acute distress. However, little is known about why people select suicide instead of other ways to escape (e.g., alcohol/drug use). One possibility is that suicide-related stimuli in one's environment (e.g., suicide methods) bias this decision, particularly when such stimuli elicit little aversion. We tested whether suicide-related stimuli

Network analysis is a popular method researchers use to characterize the structure of psychopathology and inform personalized treatments. Typically, applied researchers, based on network theory, interpret symptoms with the highest strength centrality as most important to network structure and represent amenable treatment targets. This study examines the stability of strength centrality in idiographic

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience fewer positive and more negative emotions and use fewer positive words to describe themselves. Natural language processing techniques have been used to predict depression, with pronoun and emotion usage being identified as important features. However, it is unclear how depressed individuals use positive and negative words when writing about

Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a known risk factor for later alcohol-related outcomes, such as drinking at young ages or developing alcohol use disorder by adulthood. However, research has yet to determine whether common ADHD-related impairments (e.g., lower educational attainment) in early adulthood play a role in this outcome above and beyond ADHD symptom persistence

Loss-of-control eating (LOCE) is the subjective inability to stop eating once one has started or to refrain from food consumption. State-level affect, food craving, and reward dysfunction have all been implicated as vulnerabilities to recurrent LOCE, mostly studied in the context of binge eating (i.e., LOCE with objective overeating). Hypothetical purchase tasks are a behavioral economic approach to

Some evidence suggests that anhedonia is a component of nicotine withdrawal, but additional research is needed to support this conclusion and establish its clinical relevance. Secondary analyses were conducted for a comparative effectiveness smoking cessation clinical trial of combination nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine patches, and varenicline (N = 1,084). Self-reported consummatory anhedonia

Smoking cue-exposure research provides a powerful experimental method to investigate craving, test new treatments, and identify individuals and groups who may be at heightened risk for relapse. Exposure to smoking cues consistently increases craving levels, and research indicates that these peak cravings reliably predict a range of clinically meaningful outcomes. To date, studies have been underpowered

Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for developing psychotic disorders are thought to exhibit atypical visuoperceptual organization. Furthermore, CHR status is associated with reduced cognitive, social, and role functioning. We hypothesize that atypical visuoperceptual organization may lead to downstream impairments in cognitive, social, and role functioning. However, the degree to which visuoperceptual

A recent viewpoint article by J. R. Cougle (see record 2025-32396-001) noted that, of 77 empirical articles appearing in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science in 2023, "only three…incorporated an experimental manipulation" (i.e., 96% are nonexperimental)-skewed, to be certain, perhaps even alarmingly so. This is at the same time a useful observation and, in the present author's view,

Development is an iterative dynamic process that unfolds over time. Few theories, however, discuss the speed of developmental processes. Therefore, decisions about measurement timing often rely on arbitrary or practical choices, disregarding the timescale dependency of the results. As an exemplary case, this preregistered study assessed reciprocal associations between parent-adolescent conflict and

This study tracked depressive symptoms across the first year of parenthood in two cohorts of mothers recruited during pregnancy: one (n = 99) recruited before spring 2020, and one (n = 615) recruited during the first wave of pandemic lockdowns in spring 2020. We fit a series of multigroup covariance pattern models to our data. Within the pandemic cohort, symptoms were highest during pregnancy and decreased

Novel and automated means of opioid use and relapse risk detection are needed. Unstructured electronic medical record data, including written progress notes, can be mined for clinically relevant information, including the presence of substance use and relapse-critical markers of risk and recovery from opioid use disorder (OUD). In this study, we used natural language processing (NLP) to automate the

Models have been put forth to describe relations between psychopathology and personality. However, the relation in individuals with psychotic disorders is unclear. As a test of models of psychopathology-personality in psychosis, the current study included 239 individuals, each with one of four psychotic disorders-schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder with psychotic features (BPp), major depressive disorder

The distinction between the concepts of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is fundamental to the Kraepelinian tradition in psychiatry. One mechanism undergirding this distinction, a difference in reward sensitivity, has been championed by a number of scholars. As part of the Cognitive Neuroscience Test Reliability and Clinical applications for Serious mental illnesses consortium, 225 participants including

Understanding psychopathological mechanisms is a central goal in clinical science. While existing theories have demonstrated high research and clinical utility, they have provided limited quantitative explanations of mechanisms. Previous computational modeling studies have primarily focused on isolated factors, posing challenges for advancing clinical theories holistically. To address this gap and

Drinking contexts are theorized to represent a core factor driving hazardous consumption and ultimately susceptibility to alcohol use disorder. Yet capturing and characterizing contextual influences on alcohol consumption has posed a significant challenge. In this study, we employ objective ambulatory assessment methods to test a multiaxial framework for understanding contextual influences on drinking

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with a complex etiology. Endophenotypes are assumed to be linked to the genetic underpinnings of complex disorders and have become a popular approach for investigating the etiology of ADHD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of cognitive endophenotypes for ADHD by examining differences in

Young adults who engage in problematic cannabis use report lower work and interpersonal functioning yet are less likely to seek treatment, necessitating alternative methods for assessing and intervening on problematic cannabis use (e.g., mobile health applications to self-monitor drivers of cannabis use in daily life). However, previous work examining maintenance models of problematic cannabis use

Personality and psychopathology share a hierarchical dimensional structure, developmental trajectories and correlations with varied outcomes. However, quantifying the extent and details of their direct empirical overlap has been hindered by overreliance on self-reports and broad construct domains. Using multimethod data, we estimated the Big Five personality domains' and nuances' (items') "true" correlations

Operationalizations of emotion reactivity (ER) have changed rather dramatically over the past decade. Comparing the results across studies that use these diverse methods is difficult. The current article reviews and critiques these approaches to studying ER. Three desirable characteristics are identified: (a) using multiple diverse stimuli to assess emotions will enable researchers to characterize

Individuals with schizophrenia have poorer performance and often differing patterns of brain activation compared to controls on a variety of cognitive tasks, including those that require inhibition of responses and shifting to new responses. This study sought to examine the degree to which performance on a task developed to measure cognitive flexibility, the Penn Conditional Exclusion Test (PCET),

Hundreds of published studies have advanced understanding of the hypothesized general factor of psychological problems, but confusion still surrounds the hypothesis. This partly results from critics conflating our hypotheses with those of other authors, but we have created confusion ourselves by stating two different general factor hypotheses, which we differentiate here. In the psychometric general

Suicidality is common among people at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Delineating causal pathways to suicidality and identifying its determinants would inform tailored intervention efforts for these individuals. To this end, we analyzed data on CHR samples from the second and third North American Prodrome Longitudinal Studies (NAPLS-2, n = 355; NAPLS-3, n = 266). Data on correlates of suicidality-including

In this viewpoint article, the authors assert that psychology is in the midst of a "replication crisis" due to factors such as low power, p-hacking, publication bias, and hypothesizing after the results are known (HARKing). Individually, these practices have been decried for decades, but only in the last 15 years has the corrosive effect of these practices been fully appreciated. The authors contend

Escalating rates of suicide among U.S. military Veterans have prompted the Department of Veterans Affairs to prioritize Veteran suicide as a chief clinical concern. Veterans Affairs-funded research is consistently dedicated to suicide prevention initiatives, reflecting a commitment to addressing this urgent issue. Although general guidelines have been proposed for recognizing and responding to suicide

Ecological momentary assessment is increasingly leveraged to better understand affective processes underlying substance use disorder treatment and recovery. Research in this area has yielded novel insights into the roles of mean levels of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in precipitating drug craving and substance use in daily life. Little of the extant substance use disorder treatment

There has been longstanding speculation that enhanced creativity is associated with autism. Evidence for this association, however, is limited and derived from small-scale studies in nonclinical samples. Furthermore, nothing is known about autism-related creativity after accounting for general cognitive ability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), that is, other factors known to predict

In this viewpoint article, the authors contend that behavioral addiction (BA) research must move past substance use disorder paradigms. Under the most liberal definitions of BA, activities such as eating, exercise, work, smartphone use, and a litany of others could all become addictions. Abundant clinical evidence shows that people may frequently engage in behaviors in ways that become impairing. Yet

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines anorexia nervosa (AN) severity based on body mass index (BMI). However, BMI categories do not reliably differentiate the intensity of AN and comorbid symptoms. Shape/weight overvaluation has been proposed as an alternative severity specifier. The present study used structural equation model (SEM) Trees to empirically

Modern psychopathology classification systems position attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with different groups of conditions, either with externalizing or neurodevelopmental. As such, the optimal placement of ADHD in modern classification systems remains unclear. We advanced the literature by mapping ADHD symptoms onto three transdiagnostic psychopathology spectra-externalizing, neurodevelopmental

Substance use relapse is difficult to define, and previous work has used one-size-fits-all ad hoc definitions. Researchers have called for a dynamic and personalized understanding of relapse as a concept and model, necessitating novel statistical tools. We aimed to develop and validate a novel statistical model of latent relapse processes: the double-well potential model (DWPM). This model describes

We examined prevalence, incidence, impairment, course, and diagnostic transitions for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, eating disorders, overweight, and obesity in a high-risk sample of 1,952 young women (Mage = 19.7 years) who completed diagnostic interviews over a 3-year period. The baseline prevalence of any eating disorder was 13.3% and 25.4% showed onset (incidence)

Summarizing specific psychopathology symptoms into higher order factors has a long tradition in mental health science. More recently, the general psychopathology factor (p factor) has gained much interest and currently reflects the highest level of the psychopathology hierarchy. The p factor is modeled from covariance of transdiagnostic psychopathology symptoms. Because such covariance is robust (persons

As clinical psychological science and biological psychiatry push to assess, model, and integrate heterogeneity and individual differences, approaches leveraging computational modeling, translational methods, and dimensional approaches to psychopathology are increasingly useful in establishing brain-behavior relationships. The field is ultimately interested in complex human behavior, and disruptions

Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms involved in psychopathology has been hindered by the limitations of categorical nosologies. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is an alternative dimensional system for characterizing psychopathology, derived from quantitative studies of covariation among diagnoses and symptoms. HiTOP provides more promising targets for clinical neuroscience

Psychophysiology can help elucidate the structure and developmental mechanisms of psychopathology, consistent with the Research Domain Criteria initiative. Cross-sectional research using categorical diagnoses indicates that P300 is an electrocortical endophenotype indexing genetic vulnerability to externalizing problems. However, current diagnostic systems' limitations impede a precise understanding

Theoretical and methodological research on threat conditioning provides important neuroscience-informed approaches to studying fear and anxiety. The threat conditioning framework is at the vanguard of physiological and neurobiological research into core mechanistic symptoms of anxiety-related psychopathology, providing detailed models of neural circuitry underlying variability in clinically relevant

Traditional mental health diagnoses rely on symptom-based classifications. Yet this approach can oversimplify clinical presentations as diagnoses often do not adequately map onto neurobiological features. Alternatively, our study used structural imaging data and a semisupervised machine learning technique, heterogeneity through discriminative analysis, to identify neurobiological subtypes in 9- to

Internalizing psychopathology is associated with abnormalities in heart rate variability (HRV). Lower HRV that reflects reduced parasympathetic nervous system activity has been observed in depressive and anxiety disorders. Existing studies predominantly used categorical rather than dimensional approaches, the latter of which better addresses clinical comorbidity and heterogeneity. Moreover, there is

Brain structure correlates of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) remain poorly understood as limited OCPD assessment has precluded well-powered studies. Here, we tested whether machine learning (ML; elastic net regression, gradient boosting machines, support vector regression with linear and radial kernels) could estimate OCPD scores from personality data and whether ML-predicted scores

Within-disorder heterogeneity complicates mapping the neurobiological features of psychopathology to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders conceptualizations. The present study explored the patterns of diagnostic classification errors among disorders with commonly co-occurring features to examine this heterogeneity. Classification analyses were conducted with the University of California

Anhedonia emerges during adolescence and is characteristic of severe mental illness (SMI). To understand how anhedonia emerges, changes with time, and relates with other symptoms, there is a need to understand patterns of this symptom's course reflecting change or stability-and associations with clinical symptoms and neural reward circuitry in adolescents at risk of SMI. In total, 113 adolescents at

Individual differences in reward functioning have been associated with numerous disorders in adolescence. Given relations with multiple forms of psychopathology, it is unclear whether these associations are disorder specific or reflective of shared variance across multiple disorders. In a sample of adolescents (N = 418), we examined associations between neural and self-reported indices of early reward

Clinical heterogeneity is a significant factor to contend with when seeking to organize, understand, and treat psychopathology. In recent years, the field has prioritized efforts to minimize nonmeaningful heterogeneity and leverage meaningful heterogeneity to improve assessment and diagnostics, inform mechanistic understanding, and facilitate the development of novel treatments. Indeed, exciting developments

A primary goal of clinical neuroscience is to identify associations between individual differences in psychopathology and the brain. However, despite a significant amount of resources invested in this endeavor, few reliable neural correlates of psychopathology have been identified. A common suspect for this lack of success is the significant heterogeneity in symptoms observed in psychiatric disorders

A "natural kind" is a specific classification that identifies some structure of truth and reality, a delimited entity. Psychiatric disorders are not natural kinds. As one moves from physics and chemistry to biology and medicine, natural kinds degrade, and the boundaries of differentiating phenomena become less clear. Within psychiatry, the categorization of psychopathology has further ontological challenges

This is an invited commentary article for the special issue. The main thesis is that an effective strategy for computational psychiatry to handle the (possibly intrinsic) heterogeneity of psychiatric disorders is to focus on developing clinical principles rather than solely precision medicine. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This article provides an overview of Stress Generation Methodology. Stress generation is a phenomenon in which individuals with depression or vulnerability to depression experience greater dependent stressful life events (SLEs), defined as stressors in which individuals at least partially contributed to occurrence. The stress generation process demonstrates how depressed individuals shape their environments

Prevailing factor models of psychosis are centered on schizophrenia-related disorders defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and International Classification of Diseases, restricting generalizability to other clinical presentations featuring psychosis, even though affective psychoses are more common. This study aims to bridge this gap by conducting exploratory and confirmatory

The picture for the long-term prediction of schizotypic individual difference features in relation to schizotypy assessed earlier in life remains opaque. Whereas schizotypy assessed earlier in life, typically during the late teen years, has been shown to predict nonaffective psychotic illness as well as the presence of nonaffective psychotic features (Chapman et al., 1994; Lenzenweger, 2021), the presence

The presentation of major depressive disorder (MDD) can vary widely due to its heterogeneity, including inter- and intraindividual symptom variability, making MDD difficult to diagnose with standard measures in clinical settings. Prior work has demonstrated that passively collected actigraphy can be used to detect MDD at a disorder level; however, given the heterogeneous nature of MDD, comprising multiple

Psychological functioning is shaped by how people navigate their environment. Accordingly, psychopathology is often caused and maintained by patterns of responding to the environment that do not meet situational demands. In particular, psychopathology is often expressed in an inflexible or intense manner of coping with stressful situations. Prior research on psychopathology and daily life stress is

Stress is one of, if not the, most ubiquitously studied risk factor across the health sciences. This is unlikely to change given that the primary drivers of mortality and disability are chronic, stress-mediated illnesses (often highly comorbid with psychopathology). We argue that an important limitation of stress research is the consistency with which the Trier Social Stress Test is used when the research

Mental illness and identity are related, with issues in identity contributing to the development of psychopathology and vice versa. However, little work has examined how mental illness and identity can become interwoven (i.e., mental illness identity). Mental illness identity may be particularly important during adolescence, as this life phase is marked by the salience of identity and an increase in

Approximately 9% of people think about suicide during their lifetime. Suicidal thoughts are consistently associated with perceived failures in emotion regulation. However, factors contributing to these perceptions remain insufficiently clear. New evidence suggests that when people know little about the cause of their emotions (i.e., low source attribution of emotion), they perceive themselves as less