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Studies in the Childhood Psychoses I. Diagnostic Criteria and Classification
459
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0
References
1971
Year
Psychiatric EvaluationClinical Child PsychologyChild Mental HealthPsychologySocial SciencesPersonality DisorderDevelopmental PsychologyClinical PsychologyChild PsychologyPsychiatrySingle PsychosisMedicineClinical PsychiatryPsychodynamicChildren's Mental HealthAdolescent StudiesPsychotic DisorderChild DevelopmentAge StudiesPsychosocial StudiesPediatricsSchizophreniaEmpirical EvidenceChild PsychiatryChildhood PsychosesPsychopathology
Childhood psychoses have long suffered from nosological confusion, with debates over a single versus multiple disorders and the role of age of onset, but recent empirical evidence has prompted a shift toward more comprehensive, age‑based classification. The present study examines the importance of age of onset in childhood psychosis classification.
Until the last decade there was considerable confusion about the nosology of childhood psychoses. As Kanner (1958) has pointed out, certain psychodynamically orientated writers (Szurek, 1956; Beres, 1956) have eschewed the important operation of differential diagnosis. This has led to the notion of ‘equality of schizophrenias' (Darr and Worden, 1951) and thus to the idea of a single psychosis of childhood. The controversy over this approach has now waned in the face of empirical evidence from aetiological, phenomenological and follow-up studies, and many authors have stressed the importance of age of onset in their typologies or in their attempts at a more comprehensive classification (Kanner and Lesser, 1958; Mahler et al. , 1949, 1952; Bender, 1947, 1959; Anthony, 1958, 1962, and Eisenberg, 1967). As this is also central to the present study it merits examination in greater detail.