The Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostic for Children and Adolescents (OPD-CA-2): a new diagnostic method to determine psychodynamic constructs

This special issue deals with a new diagnostic system, the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostic for Children and Adolescents (OPD-CA-2). It has been an established instrument in the clinical context in German-speaking countries for several years. With the English version of the manual published in 2017, the Spanishand Turkish language version published in 2020 and 2021, the concept of operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics will spread even more widely internationally. We present in this special issue the initiatives and findings from contributors from Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Sweden and South America. The question of symptom diagnosis versus structure and conflict diagnosis currently occupies many therapists. The OPD-CA can be seen as a supplement to conventional diagnostics with the ICD-11 or the DSM-5. A symptom diagnosis can in no way be dispensed; it is the symptoms from which the patients and their families suffer and which ultimately lead to a diagnostic examination and, if necessary, to counseling, psychotherapeutic treatment or another indication. However, the mere determination of the symptoms is not sufficient for an efficient treatment, because symptoms can often change spontaneously or different symptoms occur simultaneously, so that a purely symptom-specific treatment may not be very effective. The Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics in Childhood and Adolescence (OPD-CA) therefore strives for a complex recording of psychodynamic processes that caused the symptoms and embeds them in the developmental context. The development concept is central and affects all aspects of the process, from the type of findings to the selection of relevant diagnostic categories to the process of diagnostic assessment on various content-related axes and finally, a treatment recommendation.