To facilitate the comparison between the different questionnaires and to the findings from the interviews, a categorisation of all symptoms included in the questionnaires was made with respect to engagement (Table 6) that was similar to the categorisation of the content of the interviews.
The approach of excluding some negative symptoms, for example, is potentially problematic since no evidence was provided to support the categorisation of a negative symptom as social or not.
A DSM-style categorisation of illness based on symptoms could still be useful, provided we bear in mind that our local diagnostic categories are no more universal than our local language.
Stratifying categorisation of prolonged intervals by symptom would result in more accurate and informative analyses of timely and prolonged symptom appraisal and, or, help-seeking.
To facilitate analysis, the main outcomes were restricted to binary events (e.g. presence and absence of symptoms), and the categorisation of their severity was only focussed on data collected from boxes C, H and I of the questionnaire.
The Modified Rankin Scale (MRS) is a simple 6-level categorisation of functional independence: 0 indicates no symptoms, 1 indicates symptoms but no disability, 2 indicates slight disability but independent, 3 indicates moderate disability but can walk independently, 4 indicates moderately severe disability, 5 indicates severe disability.
18 There were no measures of disease severity in the data; however, the Global Initiative for Chronic Lung Obstructive Lung Disease GOLDD) has emphasised the importance of symptoms and GOLD severity categorisation in predicting respiratory care utilisation and decline in lung function.
I would argue that the categorisation of mental illness based on symptoms can be useful.
GP recall bias could influence the secondary care interval and the categorisation of patients according to initial symptom presentation and cancer suspicion for the first referral to secondary health care.
Relational continuity was disclosed as an essential prerequisite for their interpretation of symptoms as medically unexplained and for the categorisation as 'multiple symptoms'.
