Basic Science: Treatment, Therapy and Diagnostic Criteria for Mental Disorders
The notion of a ‘mental disorder’ rests upon a particular model of so-called ‘normal’ functioning and observable deviations from that norm; this model fits only awkwardly with some approaches to therapy. Perhaps even more significantly, unlike the usual notion of ‘diagnosis’ common to Western medicine, however, psychiatry’s diagnostic categories of mental disorders are defined in terms of lists of symptoms. Scientifically, they are nothing at all like most medical diagnoses.