A taxonomy of emotional disturbances.

Abstract

We propose a taxonomy of emotional disturbances composed of (a) emotional valence disturbances, (b) emotional intensity/regulation disturbances, and (c) emotion disconnections. Our rationale for developing such a taxonomy is that it can draw additional attention to the importance of emotional disturbances and can provide a framework for organizing both what we already know and what we have yet to explore. We believe such an effort is important because emotional disturbances, which are ubiquitous among individuals with psychopatholog-ical conditions, can provide incremental predictive power above and beyond traditional diagnostic categories. We discuss the potential clinical utility of our proposed taxonomy and provide recommendations for future research.