ABSTRACT
It is fair to say that ‘measurement’ has been a Holy Grail for mental health research throughout its history. Early in the 20th century, the path to enlightenment seemed to lie in the science of phenomenology. Pioneering clinical researchers such as Kraepelin and Bleuler, faced with a ‘sea’ of mental illness, sought to differentiate subtypes with distinguishable symptomatology and outcome. Parallel, seminal work by Jaspers and others focused on symptoms rather than syndromes, seeking to distinguish and describe these in a way that could be understood and communicated between clinicians-a new ‘language’ in effect.
