Can the Big Five Diagnose Mental Illness? Why Personality Traits Are Not Diagnoses

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Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: October 9, 2026 · Editorial Policy

The Big Five personality model describes broad patterns in how people tend to think, feel, and behave. It cannot diagnose depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, a personality disorder, or any other mental illness. A Big Five score measures a personality construct as operationalized by a particular questionnaire; a clinical diagnosis requires evidence about symptoms, time course, impairment, context, and possible alternative explanations. The distinction matters whether you are interpreting your own results, reading a research study, or discussing personality with a clinician.

Research has nevertheless found meaningful statistical relationships between personality and psychopathology. The question is what those relationships establish. The large meta-analysis by Kotov and colleagues links broad traits with several diagnostic groups, while the World Health Organization's ICD-11 clinical requirements describe a separate process for identifying mental disorders. Both findings can be true because understanding a trait distribution and determining whether a clinical condition is present answer different questions.

Quick answer: Can a Big Five score tell you whether you have a mental illness?

No. Neither a high score nor a low score on any of the five broad dimensions is a mental illness diagnosis. The same score can occur in people with and without a disorder. A person can have a psychiatric condition while showing an unremarkable Big Five profile, and a person can score at an extreme of a personality distribution without experiencing clinically significant problems.

A Big Five assessment may provide supplementary information about habitual emotion regulation, sociability, organization, interpersonal behavior, and openness to experience. It can also support research on group-level differences. Its interpretation must retain the instrument, norms, and measurement limitations of the actual test used. A general-purpose personality result cannot replace an evaluation designed to investigate specific clinical concerns.

What the Big Five measures—and what it does not

The five broad Big Five domains are Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. They represent continuous individual differences rather than psychiatric categories. People occupy positions along dimensions; the model supplies no universal disease threshold. Our Big Five overview explains the full framework, and the domains, aspects, and facets guide explains why narrower characteristics require instrument-specific interpretation.

Openness concerns tendencies associated with imagination, curiosity, and engagement with ideas or experiences. Conscientiousness concerns organization, persistence, and self-regulation. Extraversion concerns sociability, assertiveness, and positive engagement. Agreeableness concerns interpersonal cooperation, compassion, and respectfulness. Neuroticism concerns susceptibility to negative emotion and stress-related responses. These are population-level descriptive constructs, and none of their labels is a clinical finding about an individual.

The language printed on a test report must match the instrument. For instance, the BFI-2 uses the domain name Negative Emotionality, conceptually related to traditional Neuroticism, and organizes its five domains into fifteen named facets. The BFI-2 development and validation study is evidence for that instrument's hierarchical structure. NEO instruments and other inventories organize narrower content differently. The Big Five framework itself does not mandate one universal set of exactly thirty facets.

The distinction between descriptions and judgments is equally important. Lower Extraversion does not establish social anxiety, higher Neuroticism does not establish depression, lower Conscientiousness does not establish ADHD, lower Agreeableness does not establish antisocial personality disorder, and unusual Openness results do not establish psychosis. A trait questionnaire was designed to represent typical variation on its own scales. It was not validated as a stand-alone diagnostic rule for those conditions.

Personality trait, symptom, screening result, and clinical diagnosis: four different levels

1. A personality trait is a tendency across situations and time

A trait describes a person's relatively characteristic pattern, estimated from reports or behavior across occasions. Traits show meaningful stability and change over the life span, as established in a large longitudinal meta-analysis. A trait score is an estimate affected by the instrument, respondent, circumstances, and reference population. A high or low score becomes informative only relative to the test's construct and validated interpretation.

2. A symptom is an experience or behavior that may require explanation

Low mood, insomnia, panic, distractibility, social withdrawal, and emotional distress are examples of experiences that may appear in multiple situations or conditions. A clinician examines when they began, how often they occur, their intensity, their consequences, and possible explanations. Trait language sometimes resembles symptom language, but two questionnaires can use similar words while measuring different constructs.

3. Screening flags a question for follow-up

A condition-specific screening instrument is designed to identify people who may need further evaluation. Screening depends on the particular condition, population, measure, and threshold. Even a positive validated screen is generally a reason for clinical follow-up rather than a complete diagnosis. As a concrete illustration, the NIMH suicide-risk screening guidance specifies a subsequent brief safety assessment after a positive screen. Ordinary Big Five inventories have an entirely different purpose and should not be used as substitutes for such tools.

4. A diagnosis integrates clinical evidence

A diagnosis asks whether a defined pattern of symptoms and clinical requirements is met in context. Depending on the condition, evaluation can consider onset, duration, frequency, distress, functional impairment, developmental history, substance use, medications, physical health conditions, and differential diagnoses. The WHO ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements are designed to support clinical identification of mental disorders. A five-dimensional personality profile does not contain all the information needed for that judgment.

Why personality traits are associated with mental disorders

Personality and mental health are connected through overlapping emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal processes. They may also share vulnerabilities or influence one another over time. This is why statistical research can find associations without licensing any diagnosis from a personality score. Risk factors, correlates, consequences, and indicators used for classification are different kinds of evidence; treating them as interchangeable creates both false alarms and false reassurance.

In a meta-analysis of 175 studies and 851 effect sizes, Kotov and colleagues found associations between broad personality domains and depressive, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Neuroticism was a prominent correlate across multiple diagnostic groups, with other traits contributing to some relationships. The strength and pattern varied by diagnosis, measure, and sampling context. The estimates describe distributions across research groups. They do not furnish a unique psychological fingerprint for an individual patient.

Such evidence cannot by itself establish direction of causation. A broad disposition may precede the onset of symptoms, ongoing distress may influence questionnaire responses, and shared factors may influence both. In the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, Karsten and colleagues observed relatively small effects associated with depressive and anxiety disorder states on some Big Five scores. That finding highlights a measurement issue: current distress can affect how someone describes their usual personality, even when longer-term traits remain meaningful.

Can high Neuroticism mean depression or an anxiety disorder?

High Neuroticism or high Negative Emotionality, according to the instrument, indicates relatively greater reported sensitivity to distress-related emotions. It does not specify whether the person has major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or no mental disorder. Those conditions have distinct clinical requirements, timelines, and assessments. A person may experience frequent worry without meeting criteria for an anxiety disorder, and a person with depression may have trait scores that do not fit a stereotyped profile.

The meta-analytic evidence on trait–disorder relationships is useful for understanding shared patterns in populations. It does not imply that a particular score is a validated diagnostic test. For an actual evaluation, NIMH guidance on discussing symptoms emphasizes their onset, severity, frequency, and associated life changes. Neuroticism-specific measurement, facets, and clinical associations belong to their dedicated English Neuroticism knowledge cluster; this article addresses the diagnostic boundary across all five domains.

Can low Extraversion mean social anxiety, depression, or autism?

Low Extraversion can describe a preference for less stimulation, lower social assertiveness, or lower frequency of positive social engagement, depending on how the questionnaire operationalizes the domain. Depression can also include withdrawal or reduced interest, social anxiety can involve fear of evaluation, and autism concerns developmental characteristics involving social communication and patterns of behavior or interests. The overlap of some outward behaviors does not make these concepts equivalent.

A clinical investigation asks why someone is socially reserved, whether that pattern has changed, whether distress or impairment is present, and what the person's developmental and current context shows. An introverted person may be thriving. An outgoing person may experience significant anxiety or depression. A personality score supplies a useful descriptive possibility, not a clinical explanation.

Can low Conscientiousness mean ADHD, executive dysfunction, or a lack of self-control?

Low Conscientiousness may reflect lower self-reported organization, persistence, or orderliness as measured by a given inventory. ADHD assessment investigates a specific developmental and clinical pattern involving attention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity, associated functioning, timing, and alternative explanations. Sleep disruption, depression, stress, physical illness, and situational demands can also affect concentration and follow-through. The Big Five does not adjudicate among these possibilities.

Conscientiousness is a broad domain. A person may be meticulous in certain settings and struggle in others; a single composite score compresses that variation. Neither a low domain score nor a particular facet result can independently establish a neurodevelopmental diagnosis. If attention problems disrupt daily functioning, their course and consequences warrant a condition-specific professional assessment.

Can low Agreeableness indicate a personality disorder?

Lower Agreeableness may describe a more skeptical, competitive, blunt, or conflict-prone interpersonal style, depending on the measured facets. It is not synonymous with cruelty, dangerousness, antisocial behavior, or a personality disorder. Likewise, high Agreeableness cannot certify empathy, trustworthiness, or psychological health. Moral labels cannot be read directly from ordinary personality-score distributions.

Personality disorder assessment concerns enduring patterns of functioning and associated impairment or distress in context. Research has linked ordinary trait domains to pathological personality dimensions, but overlap is not identity. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis of 36 studies found convergence between four corresponding Big Five and maladaptive-trait pairs, whereas the association between Openness and DSM-5 Psychoticism was weak. The findings show why the models can inform one another and why ordinary Big Five scores leave clinically relevant content unmeasured.

Can unusual Openness scores signal psychosis or bipolar disorder?

Openness to Experience refers to curiosity, imagination, aesthetic responsiveness, and intellectual exploration in many Big Five measures. It is conceptually different from psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations or fixed delusional beliefs, and from the episodes that define bipolar disorders. The fact that some research models have similarly named or partially correlated characteristics does not justify diagnostic interpretation.

The 2026 meta-analysis comparing PID-5 traits with Big Five domains specifically reported weak alignment between DSM-5 Psychoticism and Big Five Openness. Therefore, it is especially misleading to portray either end of an Openness scale as a proxy for psychosis. Assessment of possible psychosis or mania requires direct clinical attention to the experiences, changes, timing, and functional consequences involved.

Could a person with average Big Five scores still have a mental disorder?

Yes. Average-range personality results do not rule out depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, or personality disorders. The dimensions describe broad dispositions and are not a comprehensive clinical examination. Likewise, people whose scores are far from a sample mean may have no clinically significant condition. Both conclusions follow from a basic statistical fact: distributions of personality traits overlap across diagnostic groups.

Average, high, low, and percentile labels depend on an inventory's norm sample and scoring system. A score of 70 on an arbitrary website's graphic is not necessarily the seventieth percentile or a clinical cutoff. See our guide to Big Five scores and percentiles for the difference between raw scores, standardized scores, reference samples, and interpretation.

Do extremely high or low scores become diagnostic at some threshold?

There is no universal Big Five threshold that separates mental health from mental illness. Some validated inventories provide population norms, percentile bands, or interpretive descriptors. Those descriptors characterize relative standing on a personality variable; they do not turn a general personality test into a disorder-specific diagnostic instrument. A value that is unusual in one group may be less unusual in another, and differences between instruments complicate direct comparison.

Even where researchers observe elevated relative risk in extreme groups, an individual prediction requires calibration, relevant base rates, validated outcome definitions, and evidence from an applicable population. Such requirements are separate from the ability of a questionnaire to measure broad traits. The Big Five test validity and reliability article examines these specific measurement issues; generic psychometric methodology belongs to the Hub's measurement cluster.

What about the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders?

Clinical personality science has developed dimensional systems that connect normal-range personality research with personality pathology. In the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD), the question of severity or impairment in personality functioning is conceptually separated from maladaptive trait characteristics. The model's personality-functioning criterion concerns the self and interpersonal domain, while its trait criterion describes maladaptive patterns. These constructs are assessed in a clinical framework, not by re-labeling a standard OCEAN profile.

The original construction paper for the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) established an instrument and trait model expressly developed for maladaptive personality characteristics. Its domains include Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism. The overlap in certain names with everyday personality traits is intentional but incomplete. As the Criterion A research review emphasizes, personality functioning plays a central role in distinguishing clinically significant pathology. PID-5 traits and an ordinary BFI-2 or NEO report cannot simply substitute for one another.

The AMPD occupies an alternative model in the DSM-5 framework; its existence does not make all five-factor tests diagnostic. It also does not imply that every extreme trait constitutes a disorder. A clinician may use specialized trait and functioning measures among several information sources, alongside interviews, history, and differential assessment.

How does ICD-11 assess personality disorders?

ICD-11 provides a clinically focused dimensional approach to personality disorders. It first considers whether a personality disorder is present and, if so, rates severity. Trait-domain qualifiers may describe the pattern of disturbance: Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, Disinhibition, and Anankastia; a borderline pattern qualifier is also available. The ICD-11 clinical requirements published by WHO and Swales's scientific overview explain the structure and the importance of personality functioning.

These qualifiers are not identical to the Big Five domains, and their usage does not create a one-to-one conversion chart from a consumer personality score to clinical severity. In ICD-11, the clinical significance of the personality disturbance and the level of functioning remain decisive. The dimensional language broadens diagnostic description, but it does not authorize diagnosing people from trait labels alone.

How is the Big Five related to HiTOP and dimensional psychopathology research?

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a research framework that organizes covarying symptoms and clinical phenomena into dimensional hierarchies. It addresses problems such as comorbidity and heterogeneity among traditional categories. It is not a renamed Big Five test and should not be treated as a replacement diagnostic checklist available on every personality website. The HiTOP consortium's major review describes the scientific framework, supporting evidence, and still-developing clinical applications.

HiTOP and other dimensional approaches help researchers examine how broad vulnerabilities, narrower symptoms, and diagnostic categories relate. Such work reinforces the need to specify the construct measured and the level of analysis used. It does not collapse normal-range trait measurement, maladaptive personality trait measurement, and assessment of psychiatric syndromes into one score.

Why the exact personality test matters

BFI-2, NEO, IPIP, and very short questionnaires measure related but distinct operationalizations

The Big Five is a theoretical and statistical framework; the Big Five Inventory-2, NEO family, IPIP-based questionnaires, Big Five Aspect Scales, and brief measures are particular tools. Each has item content, scoring, calibration, facet coverage, evidence, and target uses. The BFI-2 study establishes its own fifteen-facet hierarchy, not a universal facet count for every Big Five instrument. Short questionnaires often trade coverage of narrower characteristics for convenience.

Whether a score is appropriate for a person or setting also depends on language, reading comprehension, norm population, age range, response style, and administration conditions. Reports on web-based tests sometimes conceal which instrument they use, whether items were altered, whether norms are valid for the audience, and whether the scoring algorithm has been tested. A polished dashboard cannot compensate for absent construct validity.

Self-reports, observer reports, and clinical interviews answer different questions

Self-report is influenced by self-perception, current experience, and response style; an observer may see different contexts or behaviors. Agreement and disagreement between reports can themselves be informative, but they do not automatically designate either account as clinically correct. Our self-report versus observer rating comparison covers these issues in Big Five assessment. A clinical interview adds information about symptoms, their meaning, context, history, and impairment that a general trait score does not collect.

What are the limits of predicting mental-health outcomes from personality?

Statistical prediction is an empirical question about a defined future event, model, dataset, and population. A significant correlation between Neuroticism and depression, for example, does not directly answer how likely a particular person is to develop major depressive disorder. Predictive use requires knowledge of baseline prevalence, model calibration, sensitivity, specificity, validation outside the development sample, and relevant context. These quantities cannot be inferred from the Big Five labels themselves.

A personality assessment may contribute to a broader model or clinical formulation. It could sometimes help identify topics worth discussing, such as coping, interpersonal stress, or activity patterns. It is inappropriate to use a general trait score to withhold care, declare somebody well, predict violence, or label a child or adult with a mental disorder. The practical priority is the person's functioning and presenting concerns rather than a dramatic interpretation of a profile.

Can mental illness change Big Five scores?

Personality reports may change because a person develops over time, life circumstances change, an intervention affects enduring dispositions, a current clinical episode shifts self-perception, or measurement error influences a response. These mechanisms must be distinguished rather than combined. The longitudinal meta-analysis by Bleidorn and colleagues synthesizes stability and change in traits; Karsten and colleagues found small but identifiable depressive- and anxiety-state associations with some personality scores.

This means that a test completed during intense distress may not be interpreted in exactly the same way as one completed during a stable period, even if both scores are correctly computed. Clinicians may consider current mental state, repeated assessments where appropriate, and information from other sources. One score at one moment cannot prove that a person has permanently changed or possesses a fixed clinical condition.

Does culture affect the interpretation of Big Five traits and disorders?

The Big Five has substantial support across languages and societies, while measurement equivalence, local trait structure, response norms, and cultural interpretation require direct evidence. It is not scientifically accurate to assume that every lexical study in every language reproduces exactly the same five domains or that a test norm established in one country transfers unchanged to another. Likewise, a behavioral pattern may have different social implications across settings.

A mental-health assessment requires attention to cultural context and clinical criteria; a personality instrument requires appropriate validation for its use. Both sources of context matter. Apparent cross-group score differences can reflect substantive differences, translation choices, response tendencies, or limitations of measurement. None should be converted into a claim that a group is mentally healthier or more disordered.

Can an AI personality analyzer diagnose mental illness from Big Five traits?

No general Big Five inference system obtains diagnostic authority simply by using artificial intelligence. A tool may ask questionnaire items, predict trait ratings from text, or infer traits from digital footprints. Those are distinct operations with distinct validation burdens. Agreement with a self-report questionnaire is not evidence that the model identifies psychiatric disorders. Even a model that predicts some clinical outcome in one dataset needs prospective testing, calibration, comparison with proper clinical methods, and external validation before clinical deployment.

Text and digital traces are selective, platform-dependent, and sensitive to context. Inference systems may reflect demographic or linguistic bias, unrepresentative samples, label quality, and changes in user behavior; they also raise privacy and consent concerns. A sentence written during grief or a social-media persona cannot be assumed to reveal enduring trait structure or a clinical diagnosis. Claims that an AI system ‘knows a person's mental health’ require evidence far stronger than a plausible-looking trait visualization.

How clinicians can use Big Five information responsibly

In a comprehensive assessment, a clinician might use ordinary personality measures to illuminate longstanding coping patterns, preferences, interpersonal tendencies, or strengths. Trait information may add context to a psychological formulation or help generate questions for discussion. It can be compared with a condition-specific assessment when both are appropriate. That is a supporting role rather than a stand-alone verdict.

Clinical decisions also require attention to how a person is functioning, what they experience, what has changed, and their goals for care. Work comparing dimensional and categorical personality-pathology frameworks has reported potential clinical-utility advantages for some dimensional descriptions; the meta-analytic review of clinician ratings remains evidence about the utility of frameworks, not proof that an ordinary Big Five inventory is a diagnostic instrument.

What to do if your Big Five result worries you

First identify the name and version of the instrument, its intended use, and the reference group for any percentile. Read the score as a relative description of the measured trait rather than as a prognosis. Consider whether the report is making claims the instrument was not designed to establish. Be particularly cautious if a website uses terms such as ‘disorder,’ ‘pathological,’ ‘unsafe,’ or ‘mentally ill’ solely because a Big Five scale exceeds an unexplained cutoff.

If you are experiencing distress or a meaningful decline in daily functioning, describe the actual concerns rather than trying to prove them with a personality result. Note when symptoms began, their pattern, their consequences, medications or health changes, and questions you want answered. The NIMH guide to talking with a health professional provides a useful framework for that conversation. A general personality profile may be brought as background information, but it should not control whether you seek help.

If you are already receiving care, discuss whether the questionnaire is relevant to your particular assessment and whether present symptoms might influence responses. If a report claims to diagnose a disorder, ask which diagnostic criteria, validated clinical instrument, and qualified evaluation support that claim. A well-founded assessment should make its reasoning and limits understandable.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Big Five a mental-health test?

The Big Five is a personality framework. A particular questionnaire based on it measures ordinary personality dimensions, not mental-health diagnostic criteria. Research can correlate its scores with clinical outcomes, but that does not change the original assessment's purpose.

Can Neuroticism predict depression?

Neuroticism is associated with depression risk and symptom burden in population research, but an individual prediction requires a validated model, appropriate reference population, clinical context, and baseline risk. A Neuroticism score alone neither diagnoses depression nor tells whether someone will develop it. See the meta-analysis of broad trait–disorder associations.

Can the Big Five diagnose anxiety?

No. A Big Five score may describe a tendency toward negative emotions but does not establish an anxiety disorder. Diagnostic evaluation considers symptom pattern, duration, context, and impairment. Low anxiety-related scores also cannot rule a disorder out.

Can low Conscientiousness tell me I have ADHD?

No. Conscientiousness measures a broad dispositional construct. ADHD is evaluated through condition-specific clinical and developmental evidence, including symptoms and their impact. The two can sometimes relate statistically without being interchangeable.

Can a personality test identify autism?

Big Five scores cannot diagnose or exclude autism. Autistic traits and experiences require an appropriate developmental and clinical assessment when diagnosis is sought. Being introverted, socially reserved, highly focused, or unusual on any broad personality measure is not a diagnostic finding.

Are very high or very low personality scores abnormal?

Scores may be statistically unusual relative to a specific reference sample, but statistical rarity does not mean mental illness. The meaning of ‘high’ or ‘low’ depends on the instrument and norms; no universal Big Five clinical cutoff exists.

Are personality disorders just extreme Big Five traits?

Dimensional research finds connections between ordinary traits and maladaptive characteristics, but a personality disorder involves clinically significant disturbance in functioning assessed under a diagnostic framework. The 2026 Big Five–PID-5 meta-analysis also shows incomplete alignment between models.

Does the DSM-5 use personality traits?

Yes. The DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders includes maladaptive trait domains alongside personality-functioning criteria. This is a specialized clinical model and is distinct from treating a regular OCEAN test as diagnostic. The PID-5 construction study describes the maladaptive-trait measure.

Does ICD-11 diagnose personality disorders using five traits?

ICD-11 allows five pathological trait-domain qualifiers to describe a personality disturbance, but the diagnostic process first considers the presence and severity of the disorder. These qualifiers are not the same as the Big Five, and no routine Big Five score is itself an ICD-11 diagnosis. See WHO clinical guidance.

Can personality change after treatment?

Personality measures can change over time for multiple reasons, including enduring development, temporary state effects, and measurement variability. Changes in symptoms and changes in traits are related but distinct questions. Repeat measurement has to use appropriate methods to distinguish them.

Are online Big Five quizzes accurate?

Accuracy depends on the actual inventory, scoring, reliability, validity, population norms, and interpretation. An attractive report or a large number of questions does not automatically establish quality. Even a well-validated Big Five instrument is not a diagnostic evaluation.

When should I consult a mental-health professional instead of relying on a personality score?

Consider a qualified evaluation when symptoms persist, cause distress, interfere with daily life, or change substantially from your usual functioning. If there are immediate concerns about safety, seek urgent local support rather than waiting for a questionnaire. The NIMH mental-health information hub directs readers to condition-specific information and professional resources.

The evidence-based conclusion

The Big Five is a scientifically important framework for studying personality variation. It gives researchers and practitioners a common language for broad trait patterns, and empirical research documents associations between some traits and mental-health outcomes. That contribution is valuable on its own terms. A personality score remains a measurement of a personality construct, and clinical diagnosis requires a different evidentiary process.

The most reliable interpretation is therefore precise: a Big Five profile can inform a conversation about tendencies, a clinical formulation when appropriate, or a research analysis. It cannot confirm or exclude a mental disorder, define the severity of a psychiatric condition, or turn an individual into a personality type. The distinction protects both scientific accuracy and the person being assessed.

References

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Bornstein, R. F., & Natoli, A. P. (2019). Clinical utility of categorical and dimensional perspectives on personality pathology: A meta-analytic review. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 10, 479–490.

Garzoni, D. L. C., Cotian, M. S., Zibenberg, D., & Natividade, J. C. (2026). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between PID-5 and Big-5. Personality and Individual Differences, 259, 113828.

Karsten, J., Penninx, B. W. J. H., Riese, H., Ormel, J., Nolen, W. A., & Hartman, C. A. (2012). The state effect of depressive and anxiety disorders on Big Five personality traits. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 46, 644–650.

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Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., et al. (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126, 454–477.

Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., et al. (2021). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A quantitative nosology based on consensus of evidence. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 17, 83–108.

Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. E. (2012). Initial construction of a maladaptive personality trait model and inventory for DSM-5. Psychological Medicine, 42, 1879–1890.

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