Does centrality from a network analysis tell clinicians which symptoms are important to treat?

What is it about?

Researchers have recently asserted that network analyses might uncover the most important symptoms to target in treatment. For example, they have indicated that more central symptoms might be the most important symptoms to treat. They have indicated that this might be true even when the data used were collected at a single time point. We examined this issue in generalized social anxiety disorder, and found modest support for the notion. However, simply counting how many participants endorsed the symptom as clearly present was a superior method for identifying important symptoms.

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Why is it important?

Our results suggest that the importance of centrality indices to treatment is questionable and complex at best.