Relational Processes and DSM-V

Seeking to integrate the large volume of clinical research
on relational processes and mental health disorders with other scientific
advances in psychiatry, Relational Processes and DSM-V builds on
exciting advances in clinical research on troubled relationships. These
advances included marked improvements in the assessment and epidemiology of
troubled relationships as well the use of genetics, neuroscience, and
immunology to explore the importance of close relationships in clinical
practice. Advances in family-based intervention, and prevention are also
highlighted to help practitioners and researchers find common ground and
begin an empirically based discussion about the best way to revise the DSM.
Given the overwhelming research showing that relationships play a role in
regulating neurobiology and genetic expression and are critical for
understanding schizophrenia, conduct disorder, and depression among other
disorders, relational processes must be a part of any empirically based plan
for revising psychiatric nosology in DSM-V.

The chapters in this book
counter the perspective that we can safely discard the biopsychosocial model
that has guided psychiatry in the past. The contributors examine the
relevance of close relationships in such issues as the basic psychopathology
of mental disorders, factors influencing maintenance and relapse, sources of
burden for family members, and guiding family-based interventions. By tying
relational processes to basic research on psychopathology, they demonstrate
the value of integrating basic behavioral and brain research with a
sophisticated understanding of the self-organizing and self-sustaining
characteristics of relationships. Coverage includes:


* research linking relational processes to neuroscience, neurobiology,
health outcomes, intervention research, prevention research, and
genetics
* consideration of specific circumstances, such as promoting
healthy parenting following divorce and relational processes in depressed
Latino adolescents
* optimal approaches to the assessment of relational
processes with clinical significance, such as child abuse, partner abuse,
and expressed emotion.
* a simple introduction to the methodology of
taxometrics, offering insight into whether key relational processes are
distinct categories or continuously distributed variables
* an overview
of the links between relational processes and psychiatric outcomes,
providing a theoretical foundation for the discussion of links to
psychopathology

Together, these contributions seek to develop a
shared commitment among clinicians, researchers, and psychopathologists to
take seriously the issue of relational processes as they relate to diagnoses
within DSM-and to encourage mental health care workers at all levels to
harness the generative and healing properties of intimate relationships and
make them a focus of clinical practice. It is a book that will prove useful
to all who are interested in integrating greater sensitivity to relational
processes in their work.