The MAPsy is a 154-item self-report questionnaire that screens for the symptoms of DSM-5 disorders and shows which symptoms are elevated through two lenses: 41 disorder scales, and 127 dimensions of an empirically derived hierarchy of psychopathology. Designed as a broad initial assessment, it helps clinicians identify which areas warrant further assessment.
The Multilevel Assessment of Psychopathology (MAPsy) is a 154-item self-report measure of psychopathology. It assesses symptoms of disorders described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and scores them on 41 disorder scales. It also maps the client’s symptoms onto an empirically derived hierarchy of psychopathology comprising nine spectra, two subspectra, 21 subfactors, and 95 symptom and syndrome clusters, based on the work of Forbes and colleagues (2025) and aligned with the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP; Kotov et al., 2017). Each score is assigned a severity band, which indicates whether the client’s level of psychopathology warrants clinical attention, and is reported as a percentile.
For some disorders, correct identification comes only after a long delay, even among people who have sought professional help. In a survey of 600 people with bipolar disorder, 69 percent reported having been misdiagnosed; those misdiagnosed had consulted an average of four clinicians before receiving the correct diagnosis, and more than a third waited 10 years or more for an accurate diagnosis (Hirschfeld et al., 2003). An average of about three years between first professional contact and diagnosis has been reported for obsessive-compulsive disorder (Stengler et al., 2013) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Nylander et al., 2013), and a median of 11 years or more between first clinical evaluation and diagnosis for adults with autism spectrum disorder (Fusar-Poli et al., 2022). A broad assessment early in a person’s contact with mental health services or professionals is one way to bring such presentations to attention sooner.
In clinical practice, the MAPsy is intended as a broad initial assessment to identify the dimensions of psychopathology and the DSM-5 disorders whose symptoms warrant further assessment. A clinician who works in DSM-5 categories can read the disorder scales; one who thinks in dimensions can read the spectra, subfactors, and clusters. Either can move between the two frameworks, expanding a disorder scale in the report to see the clusters, facets, or domains from which it is scored. The MAPsy can be used at intake and to inform case formulation and treatment planning.
The MAPsy is used as part of a comprehensive assessment of psychopathology; it does not replace the clinical interview and disorder-specific assessment. A score on a DSM-5 disorder scale describes the level of the symptoms that the MAPsy measures for that disorder and does not establish a diagnosis.
The MAPsy scores a client’s symptoms in two frameworks, both from the same 154 items. The empirical hierarchy groups symptoms into dimensions, from broad spectra to specific symptom clusters. The DSM-5 disorder scales group the same symptoms by disorder, so that the client’s symptoms can also be read in the diagnostic terms clinicians are trained in. The items are also scored on 23 personality facets and six neurocognitive domains, which are the building blocks of the personality disorder and neurocognitive disorder scales.
Together these are the MAPsy’s 197 constructs. Every item contributes to a cluster, and through it to the constructs at higher levels of the hierarchy, and to whichever disorder scales, facets, or domains its content measures.
The hierarchy describes a client’s psychopathology at several levels of resolution, from broad to narrow:
Some clusters sit within more than one subfactor or spectrum, because the symptoms they measure are associated with more than one broader dimension.
The definitions below cover the nine spectra, the two subspectra, and the 21 subfactors. They are the same definitions displayed in the report, and describe each one as characterised by Forbes et al. (2025) and the HiTOP literature; where the MAPsy measures a spectrum, subspectrum, or subfactor through a narrower or broader range of content than the literature describes, the definition says so.
Represents the broad propensity to experience negative emotions turned inward. This wide-ranging spectrum spans low mood, worry and anxious arousal, fear-based avoidance, social withdrawal, and trauma-related distress with disturbed sleep.
Subfactors:
Measures behaviour and emotion directed outward against other people, rules, or norms — a broad spectrum spanning impulsive, reckless, or aggressive conduct, manipulation and self-interest, reduced concern for others, and outwardly directed anger.
Subfactors:
Assesses the core features of problematic alcohol and other drug use, including craving, loss of control over use, tolerance and withdrawal, continued use despite harm, and use in dangerous situations.
Note: Only clients who report using one or more substances in the past year are administered the items from which this spectrum is scored; others do not receive a score on this spectrum.
Measures the dimension of elevated and expansive mood. In this measure, it is assessed through euphoric mood, heightened sociability and talkativeness, unrestrained emotional expression, and enjoyment of attention.
Measures disengagement from social and emotional life, together with low mood: reduced interest and pleasure, hopelessness and diminished self-worth, withdrawal from relationships and social contact, and a muted or unexpressed emotional range. In this measure, the dimension also encompasses reduced interest in sexual and romantic relationships.
Measures disruptions to the ordinary integration of perception, thought, and consciousness, spanning psychotic-like experiences and beliefs, dissociative experiences, and associated physical and behavioural changes.
Subfactors:
Assesses the experience of physical symptoms and bodily concern — pain, palpitations and breathlessness, temperature sensations, unsteadiness and slowed thinking or movement — together with health anxiety and disturbances of sleep and eating.
Subfactors:
Assesses disturbances of eating and body image, including fear of weight gain, the influence of weight or shape on self-evaluation, restrictive eating, and distress associated with overeating.
Encompasses difficulties of neurodevelopment and cognition — a broad spectrum spanning social communication, attentional and sensory regulation, ritualised and inflexible behaviour, and problems with memory, attention, and everyday cognitive functioning.
Subspectra and subfactors:
The 41 DSM-5 disorder scales are scored in three ways: 32 from the items of the clusters that measure each disorder’s symptoms, seven from the items of the personality facets, and two from the items of the neurocognitive domains. The scales range from one to 53 items.
The 32 disorder scales scored from clusters are:
Seven personality disorder scales are scored from the items of the personality facets that define each disorder in the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD):
Antisocial Personality Disorder with Psychopathic Features is defined by the seven facets of Antisocial Personality Disorder together with Attention seeking and low levels of Anxiousness and Withdrawal, so the Anxiousness and Withdrawal items are reverse scored in this disorder’s scale.
The 23 personality facets correspond to the trait facets on which the personality disorders of the DSM-5 AMPD are defined. Each facet is measured by between one and 11 items, all of which also contribute to the hierarchy and to the DSM-5 disorder scales.
Major Neurocognitive Disorder and Mild Neurocognitive Disorder are both scored from the items of all six neurocognitive domains; the two scales share the same items and differ in their severity thresholds.
The six neurocognitive domains correspond to the cognitive domains on which the DSM-5 neurocognitive disorders are defined. Each domain is measured by between two and seven items, all of which also contribute to the hierarchy and to the DSM-5 disorder scales.
The MAPsy yields scores for nine spectra, two subspectra, 21 subfactors, and 95 clusters of the empirical hierarchy, and for 23 personality facets, six neurocognitive domains, and 41 DSM-5 disorder scales. A construct’s score is the sum of its constituent item scores. Higher scores indicate that the construct’s items were rated as more true, or more common, over the past year.
The score itself is not displayed in the report: it is converted to a percentile and assigned a severity band, and the report presents those.
For the Antisocial Personality Disorder with Psychopathic Features scale, the items measuring Anxiousness and Withdrawal are reverse scored before summing, so that low anxiousness and low withdrawal contribute to the scale in the direction that defines the disorder.
Percentiles are the primary metric for presenting scores because they are comparable across constructs, regardless of the number of items, and are readily communicated to clients and other professionals. Each score is converted to a percentile against the distribution of scores on that construct in a reference sample drawn from Forbes et al.’s (2025) study. Percentiles can be based on the whole reference sample, All (respondents aged 16 years and over), or on one of two subsets of it, Youth (16 to 24 years) and Adult (25 years and over). The Youth or Adult sample is selected by default from the client’s age at administration, calculated from their date of birth, and the Adult sample is used when no date of birth is entered.
The reference sample is best described as a distress-enriched sample: most of its members were receiving mental health treatment and more than half reported very high psychological distress. Percentiles therefore describe the client’s standing relative to that population rather than the general community. A score at the 50th percentile is typical of that population and does not indicate an average level of psychopathology relative to the general community. A distress-enriched sample has the advantage that its percentiles discriminate among individuals across the full range of severity, including the high levels seen in clinical settings.
The percentile does not itself say whether a level of psychopathology is clinically significant; that judgement is carried by the severity band. The percentile instead shows how far the client’s level of psychopathology is from what is typical of the reference sample.
Each construct’s score is assigned a severity band. The three bands are:
The bands are separated by two thresholds on the construct’s score, which are specific to each construct. For the spectra, subspectra, subfactors, clusters, personality facets, and neurocognitive domains, the thresholds are the sums of their items’ thresholds, which were set by clinical review of each item’s content. For some constructs, the two thresholds are the same, so there is no Elevated band.
For the DSM-5 disorder scales, the thresholds were based on how common each disorder is in the general population, not on item thresholds. A more prevalent disorder therefore generally reaches a band at a lower percentile than a less prevalent one. For example, against the Adult reference sample, a client at the 73rd percentile on the Major Depressive Disorder scale is in the Clinically Significant band, while a client at the 92nd percentile on the Panic Disorder scale is in the Elevated band. The severity band, not the percentile, is therefore the comparison to use across disorder scales. A band on a DSM-5 disorder scale describes the level of the symptoms that the MAPsy measures for that disorder and does not establish a diagnosis.
The report presents a client’s results in two frameworks.
The Empirical Hierarchy panel shows the nine spectra, each expanding to its subspectra, subfactors, clusters, and items.
The DSM Disorders panel shows the disorder scales on which the client’s score is in the Clinically Significant severity band, followed by those on which it is in the Elevated severity band, each expanding to the clusters, facets, or domains from which it is scored.
In both panels, each row has a bar showing the severity bands, with a marker at the client’s percentile. Below the two panels, the Interpretation panel names the elevated spectra, subspectra, subfactors, and disorder scales, and, in the four spectra without subfactors, the elevated clusters.
A Risk of Self-harm or Suicide panel appears at the top of the report whenever the client has endorsed any of the four suicidality items, and lists each such item with the response selected.
The MAPsy is built on the item pool and empirical structure published by Forbes et al. (2025), who extracted candidate symptoms from the DSM-5 text, developed a survey of 680 items, administered it to 14,762 respondents, and derived a consensus structure of 27 subfactors, two subspectra, and eight spectra. NovoPsych selected a subset of the disorders described in the DSM-5 for their relevance to the typical mental health clinician, and reduced a starting pool of 549 items, covering the clusters of the consensus structure, to 154 items. The items retained were those that best measured each cluster and subfactor, judged on their readability, face validity, response distributions, and correlations with the constructs they contribute to. The MAPsy scores nine spectra, one more than the consensus structure, because confirmatory factor analysis of its items showed Mania and Detachment to be empirically distinct.
The reference sample for the percentiles, and the sample in which the psychometric properties below were examined, comprises the 6,883 respondents in Forbes et al.’s (2025) study who took the full-length survey and were presented with every item. Forbes et al. surveyed respondents aged 16 years and over between December 2020 and October 2022, recruited through social media advertising, Australian community groups, and an undergraduate student pool at Macquarie University.
By gender, 52.4 percent of the reference sample selected female, 33.7 percent male, 9.5 percent non-binary, gender fluid, or another identity, 2.6 percent more than one of these, and 1.8 percent none of these. By age, 32.5 percent were aged 16 to 24 years (n = 2,238; the Youth reference sample), 24.2 percent 25 to 39 years, 30.3 percent 40 to 59 years, and 13.0 percent 60 years or over; the 4,645 respondents aged 25 years and over form the Adult reference sample. Respondents resided in Australia (48.5 percent), the United States (21.0 percent), and other or unreported countries (30.5 percent).
The sample reported a high level of psychological distress. At the time of the survey, 67.6 percent were receiving medication or psychological therapy for a mental health problem, and on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10; Kessler et al., 2002) the median score was 31, with 56.3 percent scoring 30 or above, the range indicating very high distress (Andrews & Slade, 2001).
Separate Youth and Adult reference samples were adopted because respondents aged 16 to 24 score higher than those aged 25 and over on most constructs, and the difference between these two groups accounts for most of the variation in scores across the four age groups; gender-specific reference samples were not adopted, because differences between female and male respondents are small across constructs.
The MAPsy’s cluster structure reproduces the spectra of Forbes et al.’s published structure, most closely for Externalising, Thought Disorder, and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Difficulties and least closely for Harmful Substance Use.
Model fit. Each spectrum was fitted as a confirmatory factor model on its own items, with subfactors specified as correlated factors within the five spectra that have them, using weighted least squares (WLSMV) estimation on polychoric correlations in the 4,835 reference-sample respondents with complete data on every item. All nine models converged. Mania (CFI = .99, RMSEA = .05) and Harmful Substance Use (CFI = .98, RMSEA = .08) fit well, Somatoform (CFI = .92) and Thought Disorder (CFI = .90) fit acceptably, and Externalising (CFI = .85) and Eating Pathology (CFI = .88) fit marginally; Eating Pathology’s RMSEA of .19 reflects the small size of its seven-item model. Internalising (CFI = .78) and Detachment (CFI = .77) fit poorly on CFI. In Internalising, the four subfactors are distinct (correlations from .50 to .76) and the misfit arises from dependence among items across its 51 items; in Detachment, the single factor is defined by its depressed mood and reclusiveness items (loadings from .70 to .90), while the three items specific to detachment (restricted emotional expression, low sexual interest, and romantic avoidance) load between .41 and .50 and correlate with one another beyond the factor. The Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Difficulties model converged, but its information matrix could not be inverted, so only its SRMR (.04) is available.
Distinctness of the subfactors. Within each spectrum the subfactors are empirically distinct, with two exceptions. In Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Difficulties, the three items of the Forgetfulness subfactor also load on Neurocognitive Impairment (loadings from .65 to .69), leaving Forgetfulness with little variance of its own. In Somatoform, Somatic Symptoms and Dysregulated Sleep, a subfactor of two items, correlate .97. Forgetfulness and Dysregulated Sleep are retained as subfactors in keeping with the consensus structure.
Mania and Detachment as separate spectra. Mania and Detachment are scored as separate spectra because, when Forbes et al.’s Mania/Low Detachment spectrum was fitted on its 19 items with its three subfactors as correlated factors, the Mania and Detachment factors were uncorrelated (r = −.05).
Congruence with the published structure. The congruence of the MAPsy’s cluster structure with the published structure was examined by principal components analysis of the 95 clusters with oblimin rotation, comparing the component loadings with those reported by Forbes et al. for their primary and hold-out samples using Tucker’s congruence coefficient, for which values of .95 and above indicate good agreement and values from .85 to .95 fair agreement. Externalising (.97 against the primary sample, .94 against the hold-out sample), Thought Disorder (.95, .89), and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Difficulties (.95, .89) reproduce the published spectra closely. Internalising (.80, .79), Mania/Low Detachment (.80, .87), Somatoform (.75, primary sample only), and Eating Pathology (.81, hold-out sample only) reproduce them less closely, and Harmful Substance Use (.57, hold-out sample only) least; Somatoform’s coefficient reflects the proportion of its published content that is not carried in the retained items, including all of its content on elimination symptoms, sleep apnoea, and sexual dysfunction. For comparison, the median congruence between Forbes et al.’s own primary and hold-out samples across their 36 constructs is .70, and against that calibration every spectrum except Harmful Substance Use reproduces its published counterpart at least as closely as Forbes et al.’s structure replicated between their own two samples.
Scores from the 154 retained items agree closely with scores from the full 549-item starting pool at every level of the hierarchy and on the disorder scales, and somewhat less closely on the facets, the domains, and the Mania spectrum.
Comparison with the starting item pool. Every construct was scored twice for the same respondents, from the 154 retained items and from the 549-item starting pool, and the two scores were compared by Spearman’s rank correlation and by the median absolute difference between the two percentiles per respondent (per-construct n from 4,835 to 5,784). The median correlation was .97 for the seven spectra other than Mania and Detachment, .97 for the subspectra, .94 for the subfactors, .89 for the 76 clusters that do not retain every item of their starting-pool counterpart, and .94 for the 32 disorder scales scored from clusters. For a typical construct, half of respondents differ by no more than 6.5 percentile points between the two scorings.
Exceptions and lower agreement. Detachment, compared with the starting-pool subfactor from which it was formed, correlated .98, and Mania .77, its lower agreement reflecting the starting-pool Mania subfactor’s inclusion of items on heightened sexual interest, none of which were retained. The neurocognitive domains (median .85) and personality facets (median .87) show lower agreement because their benchmarks comprise only the items Forbes et al. recorded against each domain or facet, so the comparison is between two operationalisations of the construct rather than between a subset of items and the whole.
Internal consistency is high at every level: every spectrum, subspectrum, neurocognitive domain, and neurocognitive disorder scale has an omega of at least .81, and the median omega exceeds .85 at every level.
Internal consistency estimates. McDonald’s omega was estimated for every construct with two or more items, with Cronbach’s alpha alongside, in the reference sample (per-construct n from 4,840 to 5,827). Median omega is .93 for the nine spectra (range .81 to .97), .94 for the two subspectra (.93 to .95), .87 for the 19 subfactors with two or more items (.76 to .96), .88 for the 31 such clusters (.80 to .95), .87 for the 20 such personality facets (.80 to .95), .87 for the six neurocognitive domains (.84 to .92), .91 for the 27 such disorder scales scored from clusters (.77 to .96), .89 for the seven personality disorder scales (.59 to .94), and .95 for the two neurocognitive disorder scales, which share the same items. Median alpha is lower at every level, from .71 for the facets to .94 for the neurocognitive disorder scales, as expected where item loadings are unequal. The lowest value is that of Antisocial Personality Disorder with Psychopathic Features (omega = .59), whose items combine eight facets scored in the forward direction with two scored in reverse; in the reference sample the reverse-scored Anxiousness and Withdrawal items correlate negatively with the other items of the scale, so its items do not share a single dominant dimension and omega, which assumes one, is correspondingly low.
Single-item constructs. Sixty-four of the 95 clusters, two subfactors (Antisocial Behaviour and Dysregulated Eating), three personality facets (Attention seeking, Perseveration, and Rigid perfectionism), and five disorder scales (Delusional Disorder, Depersonalisation/Derealisation Disorder, Dissociative Amnesia, Illness Anxiety Disorder, and Insomnia Disorder) are measured by a single item, for which internal consistency is not defined. A single-item construct’s score is the response to that item.
Test-retest reliability. Evidence of the MAPsy’s test-retest reliability has not yet been collected.
Evidence of the convergent validity of the MAPsy against other measures and of its sensitivity to change has not yet been collected.
The severity-band thresholds were set in two ways. For the constructs of the empirical hierarchy, the personality facets, and the neurocognitive domains, thresholds are based on clinical review of each item. For the 41 DSM-5 disorder scales, they are anchored to how common each disorder is in the general population.
Item-level thresholds. The thresholds of the constructs of the empirical hierarchy, the personality facets, and the neurocognitive domains are sums of item-level thresholds set by clinical review. Each of the 154 items was assigned a first threshold, the lowest item score indicating a level of psychopathology that is of clinical interest, and a second threshold, the lowest item score indicating a clinically significant level. The thresholds were set in three stages. First, three raters independently selected thresholds for every item. The consensus for each item was then taken as the median of the three selections, or agreed through discussion with a fourth rater where selections were widely split. Finally, the consensus thresholds were reviewed against each item’s content, considering the DSM-5 criterion the item describes, where it describes one, and the raters’ judgement of how common the experience is in everyday life. The rationale for each item’s thresholds was recorded. Items describing experiences judged common in everyday life were given higher thresholds, and items describing safety-critical or under-reported experiences, such as suicidal behaviour and antagonistic conduct, lower thresholds. The reference sample did not determine the item thresholds; the proportion of the sample at or above each threshold was consulted only as context.
Disorder scale thresholds. The thresholds for the 41 DSM-5 disorder scales were instead anchored to the prevalence of each disorder in the general population, taken from the DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, 2022), the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (Kessler et al., 2005), and, for disorders these do not cover, other national surveys and published epidemiological studies, using 12-month prevalence where available and point or lifetime prevalence otherwise. Summed item thresholds would have made the proportion of respondents reaching a disorder scale’s thresholds depend on the number of items describing the disorder’s criteria, from one to 53, rather than on how common the disorder is. For each scale, the Elevated threshold was set at the score at or above which the proportion of the reference sample is closest to six times the disorder’s prevalence, and the Clinically Significant threshold at the score closest to four times, the multipliers allowing for the reference sample’s enrichment for psychological distress relative to the general population.
How the multipliers were set. The multiplier of four was set from an approximate estimate of the 12-month prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder in the reference sample: the proportion of the sample receiving treatment and the proportion reporting very high distress on the K10, combined with approximate rates of the disorder reported for such groups, indicate a prevalence of about 25 to 35 percent, roughly four times the general-population anchor of 8 percent. The multiplier of six was set relative to it so that the Elevated band captures an additional group of respondents about half the size of the group in the Clinically Significant band, comprising those whose symptoms of the disorder are of clinical interest.
Because the two differ in scope. Most measures on NovoPsych are narrow in scope: each assesses a specific disorder or area of concern, such as the PHQ-9 for depression or the GAD-7 for anxiety, and suits a clinician who already knows what needs to be assessed. The MAPsy is broad in scope. In one administration it assesses symptoms of DSM-5 disorders on 41 disorder scales and across nine broad dimensions of psychopathology, which helps the clinician establish what needs to be assessed further. This includes disorders that are often identified only after a long delay. The MAPsy does not replace the clinical interview and disorder-specific assessment; it helps guide them.
The two frameworks answer different questions. The DSM-5 disorder scales serve clinical practice directly: diagnosis in mental health settings is typically made in DSM terms, clinicians are trained in its categories, and the research on assessment and treatment is organised by them. The empirical hierarchy addresses recognised limitations of categorical diagnosis, which imposes boundaries on symptoms that vary continuously (Kotov et al., 2017).
Take, for example, the co-occurrence of depressive and anxious symptoms. In the hierarchy, it is represented as a shared position on a broader spectrum, in this case Internalising. Each level, from broad spectra down to narrow symptom clusters, describes the client’s presentation at a different level of specificity (Kotov et al., 2017; Forbes et al., 2025).
Because the items are both written in the language of DSM-5 symptoms and organised into the hierarchy, one set of responses can be scored both ways, so a clinician can read the disorder scales and see where those disorders’ symptoms sit within broader dimensions of psychopathology.
No. A diagnosis can only be made by a suitably qualified mental health professional, based on a comprehensive assessment. A score on a DSM-5 disorder scale describes the level of the symptoms that the MAPsy measures for that disorder over the past year and does not establish a diagnosis. Some disorder scales measure only some of a disorder’s symptoms, and diagnostic criteria also involve duration, onset, impairment, and the exclusion of other explanations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), which a self-report symptom measure cannot assess.
A Clinically Significant disorder scale is best read as a signal that the disorder warrants further assessment, for example through a clinical interview against the criteria. Expanding the scale in the report shows which symptoms contributed to the elevation and can help guide further assessment.
The reference sample was recruited for research on mental health; most of its members were receiving treatment and more than half reported very high psychological distress. This composition suits the measure’s purpose. A measure used to decide whether a presentation warrants further assessment needs to discriminate among individuals across the full range of severity, and a sample in which high levels of distress are common represents that range more fully than a general community sample, in which most respondents score near the floor and few score in the range where clinical decisions are made.
This means a percentile compares the client with people who may have been experiencing mental health difficulties, rather than with the general population. A percentile around 50 means a typical level of psychopathology for that group, not an average level for the community.
This is why the severity bands, which are fixed to the score and do not change with the reference sample selected, carry the judgement of whether a level of psychopathology is of clinical interest or clinically significant. The percentile shows where the client sits among people who were, for the most part, receiving mental health treatment.
Because a spectrum summarises a whole domain, while a subfactor or cluster captures one part of it. A client whose difficulties are focused on one area within a spectrum, such as social anxiety or sleep, can therefore be elevated on the subfactor or cluster that captures that area of difficulty while the spectrum as a whole remains Not Elevated.
This follows from how the thresholds are set. For the constructs of the hierarchy, a construct’s thresholds are the sums of its items’ thresholds, so a broad construct with many items needs more of its items at or above threshold before its score reaches the Elevated or Clinically Significant band than a narrow construct with few items does. This is by design: for a spectrum’s score to reach the Elevated or Clinically Significant band, the client must report symptoms at threshold level across a substantial share of the spectrum’s content, which is what an elevation on a broad dimension of psychopathology means. The hierarchy therefore registers severity at the level at which it is present, narrow problems on clusters and pervasive difficulties on subfactors and spectra.
The report and the interpretive text allow for this: every construct’s band is shown in the Empirical Hierarchy panel, and the interpretive text names elevated subfactors even when their spectrum is not elevated.
The MAPsy’s 23 personality facets carry the same names as facets of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 – Short Form (PID-5-SF), because both follow the trait facets of the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders, but they are not scored from the same items, and they serve a different purpose. The PID-5-SF gives a trait profile; in the MAPsy the facets are the building blocks of the seven personality disorder scales, and they appear in the report within those scales rather than as a profile of their own. A clinician who wants a full trait profile can administer the PID-5-SF, which is available on NovoPsych.
Because it is scored only for clients who report using a substance in the past year. Part-way through the questionnaire, the client is asked which substances they have used in the past year, from a checklist of seven classes. A client who selects one or more is then asked nine further items about substance use disorder symptoms and use in dangerous situations, and the Harmful Substance Use spectrum is scored from those items. A client who selects “None of the above” is not asked these items, so the spectrum and its clusters are shown in the report without a score, and the three checklist clusters (Alcohol use, Cannabis use, and Illicit and prescription substance use) are marked No.
NovoPsych Psychometrics
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