Clinical Staging for Youth Mental Disorders: Progress in Reforming Diagnosis and Clinical Care

Abstract

Current silo-based diagnostic systems for mental disorders lack utility and fail to fulfil a fundamental purpose of diagnosis: to guide treatment planning and predict outcomes. Diagnostic reform has gained momentum, and clinical staging has emerged as a promising framework to improve the precision of diagnosis, particularly in early illness stages, and fill current gaps in linking diagnosis to more personalized and effective intervention, prognosis, and neurobiological markers. Transdiagnostic clinical staging recognizes that the early development of mental ill-health is marked by substantial fluidity and that symptoms may, although not inevitably, evolve into more stable diagnosable syndromes. Staging facilitates the selection of interventions that are proportionate to the current need and risk of illness progression and provides an efficient framework to organize biomarker data and guide service delivery. Here, we provide an overview of transdiagnostic clinical staging and summarize key evidence supporting its ability to integrate biomarkers and guide mental health care.