The General Factor of Psychopathology
An important advance in understanding and defining mental disorders has been to take empirical approaches to mapping dimensions of dysfunction and their inter-relatedness. Such empirical approaches have consistently observed intercorrelations among the many forms of psychopathology, leading to the identification of a general factor of psychopathology (p). In this article, we review empirical support for p, including evidence for the stability and criterion validity of p. Further, we discuss the strong relationship between p and general factors of personality (GFP) and personality disorders (g-PD), substantive interpretations of p, and the potential clinical utility of p. We posit that proposed substantive interpretations of p do not explain the full range of symptomatology typically included in p. The most plausible explanation is that p represents an index of impairment that has the potential to inform the duration and intensity of a client’s mental health treatment.