Page "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" Paragraph 36

By design, the DSM is primarily concerned with the signs and symptoms of mental disorders, rather than the underlying causes.

It claims to collect them together based on statistical or clinical patterns.

As such, it has been compared to a naturalist ’ s field guide to birds, with similar advantages and disadvantages.

The lack of a causative or explanatory basis, however, is not specific to the DSM, but rather reflects a general lack of pathophysiological understanding of psychiatric disorders.

As DSM-III chief architect Robert Spitzer and DSM-IV editor Michael First outlined in 2005, " little progress has been made toward understanding the pathophysiological processes and etiology of mental disorders.

If anything, the research has shown the situation is even more complex than initially imagined, and we believe not enough is known to structure the classification of psychiatric disorders according to etiology.

" However, the DSM is based on an underlying structure that assumes discrete medical disorders that can be separated from each other by symptom patterns.

Its claim to be " atheoretical " is held to be unconvincing because it makes sense if and only if all mental disorder is categorical by nature, which only a biological model of mental disorder can satisfy.

However, the Manual recognizes psychological causes of mental disorder, for example, PTSD, so that it negates its only possible justification.