This paper reviews the career of Robert Kendell with emphasis on his contribution to diagnosis in psychiatry. His studies on the classification of depression showed that symptoms were distributed on a continuum and that division of depression into sub-types was not justified. Similarly he showed there was no clear-cut distinction between symptoms of schizophrenia and affective psychoses. He examined Scadding's definition of disease as it applied to psychiatry and questioned whether some conditions such as neuroses and personality disorders would qualify as illnesses. He concluded that available evidence supported a dimensional rather than a categorical approach to diagnosis.

中文翻译：

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罗伯特·肯德尔：他的职业生涯和对精神科诊断的贡献

本文回顾了罗伯特·肯德尔的职业生涯，重点介绍了他对精神病学诊断的贡献。他对抑郁症分类的研究表明，症状是连续分布的，将抑郁症划分为亚型是不合理的。同样，他表明精神分裂症的症状和情感性精神病之间没有明确的区别。他检查了斯卡丁对疾病的定义，因为它适用于精神病学，并质疑神经症和人格障碍等某些疾病是否符合疾病的条件。他得出的结论是，现有证据支持一种维度而不是分类的诊断方法。