Fundamentals of recognition and classification of mental illness

The recognition of various diseases, pathological conditions of the human body, is based on several principles, the application of which in each individual case seems to be more or less significant in their totality or in one or another predominant grouping.

Applying the clinical principle in the broad sense of the word to elucidate a pathological state, we try first of all to determine those subjective and objective signs that characterize a given suffering, i.e., we try to determine its clinical symptom complex; often this is enough to recognize the disease and even to predict its further course, and sometimes this also establishes the etiology of the disease; but this is not always the case; on the contrary, in many cases, a single examination of the patient is insufficient, and in order to clarify the properties of the disease, to establish a firm recognition, more or less prolonged observation of the patient is necessary in order to study the development of the clinical symptom complex over time, its modification, in order to observe new symptoms, in order to studying the course of the disease.