ABSTRACT
Interviews can be administered (a) in a free-flowing way as unstructured interviews, (b) in a way that asks questions in a pre-defined way with a pre-defined order and pre-defined scoring criteria as structured interviews, or (c) as semi-structured interviews that blend structured interviews with freedom to ask follow-up questions. In general, reliability and validity improve as the degree of structure for an interview increases.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) provide the list of mental disorders and the diagnostic criteria for mental health treatment providers. The DSM and ICD have potential strengths, including (ideally) facilitating communication, guiding treatment selection, providing justification for payment for services, providing a normalizing and empowering effect for some clients, and promoting research in psychopathology. However, there are key concerns of the DSM and ICD, including concerns with stigmatization, pathologizing normality, poor coverage, binary classification, obscuring environmental factors, no biological criteria, potential bias, and low reliability, validity, and Utility. There are alternatives to the DSM and ICD for conceptualizing psychopathology. Alternative structures of psychopathology include hierarchical structures such as the p-factor and the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP).
