Trapped: rigidity in psychiatric disorders

In the past decades, it has been shown to be difficult to predict the course of psychiatric disorders, because the mechanisms underlying their development and recovery process remain poorly understood. 1 Dalgleish T Black M Johnston D Bevan A Transdiagnostic approaches to mental health problems: current status and future directions. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2020; 88: 179-195 Crossref PubMed Scopus (82) Google Scholar These difficulties have been attributed to the fact that previous research was mostly performed from a categorical, diagnostic label point of view and on a single level (ie, psychological or biological), typically on the basis of static measures with low ecological validity. 1 Dalgleish T Black M Johnston D Bevan A Transdiagnostic approaches to mental health problems: current status and future directions. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2020; 88: 179-195 Crossref PubMed Scopus (82) Google Scholar To improve the prediction of course of illness, we propose to adopt a transdiagnostic, cross-level, mechanistic approach informed by clinical observations on rigidity in psychiatric patients.