The General Factor of Psychopathology

Abstract

An important advance in understanding and defining mental disorders has been to take empirical approaches to mapping dimensions of dysfunction and their inter-relatedness. Such empirical approaches have consistently observed intercorrelations among the many forms of psychopathology, leading to the identification of a general factor of psychopathology (p). In this article, we review empirical support for p, including evidence for the stability and criterion validity of p. Further, we discuss the strong relationship between p and general factors of personality (GFP) and personality disorders (g-PD), substantive interpretations of p, and the potential clinical utility of p. We posit that proposed substantive interpretations of p do not explain the full range of symptomatology typically included in p. The most plausible explanation is that p represents an index of impairment that has the potential to inform the duration and intensity of a client’s mental health treatment.

Brain Connectivity Patterns in Children Linked to Neurocognitive Abilities

“…There is growing evidence that impaired neurocognitive abilities are associated with diverse forms of psychopathology [12][13][14][15][16] , including schizophrenia [53][54][55] , externalizing disorders such as ADHD 56,57 and substance use disorders 58,59 , and internalizing disorders such as depression 60,61 . Notably, in this same ABCD baseline sample, we recently showed 62 that reduced scores on the general factor of neurocognition were associated with elevation in the general factor of psychopathology [63][64][65] (widely terms the "P factor"), which confers vulnerability to nearly all prevalent psychiatric symptoms. The possibility thus exists that neuromarkers for neurocognitive abilities could find clinical use in identifying individuals at risk for negative psychiatric outcomes, potentially at an early age well before overt signs and symptoms have emerged.…”

Genetic and environmental risk structure of internalizing psychopathology in youth

“…Thus, rather than focus on individual diagnostic syndromes, more comprehensive studies might transdiagnostically examine the shared versus specific aspects of genetically related constructs, particularly across anxiety and depressive phenotypes in youth. Research investigating “the general factor of psychopathology” (p‐factor) (Caspi & Moffitt, 2018; Smith, Atkinson, Davis, Riley, & Oltmanns, 2020) has typically examined broader categories of mental illness (internalizing, externalizing, and psychosis) with more recent efforts that include aspects of personality (Rosenstrom et al, 2019) and temperament (Class et al, 2019; Hankin et al, 2017). Some studies have begun to incorporate measured genetic variants (Allegrini et al, 2020; Riglin et al, 2019).…”

How robust is the p-factor? Using multitrait-multimethod modeling to inform the meaning of general factors of psychopathology in youth

“…A multitrait-multimethod examination One source of contention in psychopathology research is the notion that there is a single dimension reflecting risk for all forms of psychopathology, often referred to as the p-factor or general factor of psychopathology (Caspi et al, 2014;Lahey et al, 2012). 1 Various research teams have proposed mechanisms that could cause the theoretical p-factor (e.g., disordered thought, emotion dysregulation, negative emotionality; (Caspi & Moffitt, 2018;Smith et al, 2020), but what general factors of psychopathology actually capture in any given sample, measure, and model remains debated (Caspi & Moffitt, 2018;Lahey et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2020;Watts et al, 2019Watts et al, , 2020. What might general factors of psychopathology reflect, if not a real tendency for all forms of psychopathology to covary?…”

“…What might general factors of psychopathology reflect, if not a real tendency for all forms of psychopathology to covary? Few studies have grappled with this question, in part due to the tendency to presuppose that general factors of psychopathology reflect something substantive (cf., Smith et al, 2020;Watts et al, 2020). Research thus far has largely overlooked the possibility that general factors of psychopathology arise due to other factors, including a variety of method artifacts such as (see Leising et al, 2020, for a related review).…”