More phenomenology in psychiatry? Applied ontology as a method towards integration

Elucidating multifinal and equifinal pathways to developmental disorders by constructing real-world neurorobotic models

“…2 Additionally, there are methodological difficulties in acquiring reproducible and reliable biological observations. 20 For example, although subjective experiences of individual patients are of significant interest in psychiatry, 21 the subjectivity itself causes different neural and behavioral reactions to the same situation in both experiments and real life. 22 Furthermore, at each of the molecular, neural, and behavioral levels, individual differences are associated with consequences of other causes unrelated to neurodevelopmental disorders.…”

Applied ontology for phenomenological psychopathology? A cautionary tale

“…In their Personal View, Rasmus R Larsen and colleagues 1 note the renewed interest and growing enthusiasm for more phenomenology in psychiatry. They recognise the limitations and constraints posed by criterion-based schemes, such as the DSM and ICD, and rightly refer to the enormous potential for phenomenology to catalyse improvements to research and care programmes.…”

Applied ontology for phenomenological psychopathology? A cautionary tale – Authors' reply

“…We thank our esteemed colleagues for welcoming our proposal to initiate and spearhead the development of the Ontology of Phenomenological Psychopathology (OPheP). 1 Rosa Ritunnano and colleagues rightly point out that for the OPheP initiative to maximise its potential, it must avoid the hard-learned pitfalls of the kind of standardised clinical protocol sought by Larsen and colleagues could rather generate an (implicitly) inflexible attitude by forcing living phenomena to fit the designed taxonomy, thus recreating the totalising and hegemonic errors of the DSM. We think that a brief word of caution is in order here about the need for an open, pluralistic, and flexible approach.…”