On the Dimensional Approach to Adolescent Psychopathology: a Systematic Review.

ABSTRACT

In child and adolescent psychiatry, the clinical presentation of disorders in adolescents is complex, and categorical approaches have limitations by focusing on individual disorders. The intricate system of psychopathology during adolescence can be effectively modeled using network science, which integrates statistical and computational techniques through artificial intelligence tools. Network analysis of psychometric data from psychiatric disorder assessment tests has been extensively studied in both general psychiatry and child psychiatry. However, a comprehensive evaluation of existing network approaches that model multiple psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders encountered in adolescents remains necessary. We conducted a systematic literature review across two different databases - PubMed and Scopus - using the keywords "network analysis", "adolescent" and "psychiatry" to address this question. The selection of articles was based on age criteria and the number of pathological entities studied. Out of 406 articles, 69 were selected and analyzed. The results from some of these studies are described in this article. Notably, we observe significant heterogeneity in the findings, highlighting both the richness and complexity of adolescent psychopathology. Further research is needed to validate the already proposed results and standardize the models studied.