The p Factor: One General Psychopathology Factor in the Structure of Psychiatric Disorders?

By Avshalom Caspi, Renate M. Houts, Daniel W Belsky, S. Goldman-Mellor, H. Harrington, S. Israel, M. Meier, S. Ramrakha, I. Shalev, Richie Poulton and 1 more. Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2014

2,137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mental disorders traditionally have been viewed as distinct, episodic, and categorical conditions. This view has been challenged by evidence that many disorders are sequentially comorbid, recurrent/chronic, and exist on a continuum. Using the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, we examined the structure of psychopathology, taking into account dimensionality, persistence, co-occurrence, and sequential comorbidity of mental disorders across 20 years, from adolescence to midlife. Psychiatric disorders were initially explained by three higher-order factors (Internalizing, Externalizing, and Thought Disorder) but explained even better with one General Psychopathology dimension. We have called this dimension the p factor because it conceptually parallels a familiar dimension in psychological science: the g factor of general intelligence. Higher p scores are associated with more life impairment, greater familiality, worse developmental histories, and more compromised early-life brain function. The p factor explains why it is challenging to find causes, consequences, biomarkers, and treatments with specificity to individual mental disorders. Transdiagnostic approaches may improve research.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8459d9c839b1413bb3e233c145fee796eb3fb3a5

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Citations in the corpus

A Cybernetic Theory of Psychopathology (2018, background): “…mental disorders and personality disorders have shown that the p-factor is strongly related to Neuroticism but is additionally associated with low Conscientiousness and Agreeableness (Caspi et al., 2014; Castellanos-Ryan et al., 2016; Tackett et al., 2013; Wright, Hopwood, Skodol, & Morey, 2016).”
The Structure of Psychopathology in Adolescence (2015, positive): “Specifically, a recent series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of longitudinal psychopathology data from the Dunedin study has challenged traditional models by providing strong support for a latent general overall severity factor, with high loadings in all individual symptom dimensions (Caspi ”
Transdiagnostic Approaches to Mental Health Problems: Current Status and Future Directions (2020, background): “…than HiToP favor a bifactor structure where lower-order dimensions are not nested within broader higher-order factors, but instead explain unique residual variance that is not accounted for by the higher-order constructs (e.g., Caspi et al., 2014; Lahey et al., 2012; Snyder, Young, & Hankin, 2017).”
The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function (2021, neutral): “With respect to CC, the transdiagnostic associations of CC with psychopathology support the notion that the p factor may partly reflect CC deficits [1, 2, 197], although there may also be specific CC deficits associated with particular disorders or clusters of disorders (e.”
Affective Determinants of Health Behavior (2018, neutral): “Interestingly, a paper based on data of the Dunedin study argued that there could be a general factor in psychopathology (labeled the “p-factor”) in addition to the two broad classes of internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Caspi et al., 2014).”
The Structure of Cognitive Vulnerabilities to Depression and Anxiety (2014, neutral): “…symptom specificity or nonspecificity is fraught with difficulties (Garber & Hollon, 1991), the finding that cognitive vulnerabilities predict several comorbid forms of psychopathology is suggestive of a transdiagnostic etiologic process (Caspi et al., 2014; Nolen-Hoeksema & Watkins, 2011).”
An Evolutionary Life History Framework for Psychopathology (2014, positive): “Although OCD is usually placed in the internalizing category, it shows atypically large correlations with externalizing disorders (Lahey et al., 2008) and a close relation with the schizophrenia/bipolar spectrum (Caspi et al., 2013).”
The cognitive neuropsychology of obsessive-compulsive disorder: A critical review (2015, neutral): “Indeed, a moderate degree of cognitive deficits may be associated with having a psychopathology in general (Caspi et al. 2013) and may be exacerbated by state related psychopathological factors (e.g., stress, anxiety).”
Neurodevelopment of the association cortices: Patterns, mechanisms, and implications for psychopathology (2021, neutral): “Given the comorbid and transdiagnostic nature of psychiatric symptomatology, it has been proposed that there is a latent factor that predicts a generalized vulnerability to diverse psychopathology (the ‘‘p-factor’’) (Caspi et al., 2014, 2020; Michelini et al., 2019).”
All for one and one for all: Mental disorders in one dimension (2018, background): “A fourth hypothesis (and the one that intrigues usmost) is that p captures the disordered form and content of thought that permeates the extremeof practically every disorder (24).”