The Categorical and Dimensional Approaches of Anxiety Disorders: A Discussion of Discrete Entities with Overlapping Features

Abstract

: There has been a long debate about whether mental disorders should be classified in the categorical or dimensional approaches. This article aims to provide a new perspective on the different classification approaches of one common mental health disorder — anxiety disorder. The essay reflects on both empirical evidence and theoretical models that discuss reliability, utility, and validity as well as various classical treatments of the different classification models. More specifically, this essay analyses several sorts of commonly used psychological models like cognitive models, emotion dysregulation models, and clinical staging models to discuss whether there are discrete entities with overlapping features of anxiety disorder. The results reflect that the categorical approach is sometimes untenable in clinical treatment due to drawbacks like time limitation, lack of experience, and less knowledge of the cut-off points. Moreover, this article suggested that although anxiety disorders are somewhat discrete when doing clinical diagnoses, they share overlapping features and characteristics with other disorders and other anxiety disorders. In conclusion, a more advanced and well-established system is needed to characterize mental disorders such as anxiety disorders in the future.