That’s right, and after I wrote that response, I did wonder if you were primarily thinking about about underlying causes. I appreciate your cynicism about whether DSM diagnoses are truly “cutting reality at its joints” (they are not); the diagnoses exist much more dimensionally than the categorically-organized DSM would suggest, and there is also a great deal of overlap (“comorbidity”) among them, indicating that the disorders are not entirely separate from one another. Certain ones tend to cluster together. The DSM provides descriptive checklists of symptoms within an atheoretical framework, in terms of etiology. I liked this article, which gives an idea, at least, of some of the gene involvement and genetic overlap among eight different disorders. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the underlying causes is not nearly as advanced as one might hope:
That’s right, and after I wrote that response, I did wonder if you were primarily thinking about about underlying causes. I appreciate your cynicism about whether DSM diagnoses are truly “cutting reality at its joints” (they are not); the diagnoses exist much more dimensionally than the categorically-organized DSM would suggest, and there is also a great deal of overlap (“comorbidity”) among them, indicating that the disorders are not entirely separate from one another. Certain ones tend to cluster together. The DSM provides descriptive checklists of symptoms within an atheoretical framework, in terms of etiology. I liked this article, which gives an idea, at least, of some of the gene involvement and genetic overlap among eight different disorders. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the underlying causes is not nearly as advanced as one might hope:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)31276-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867419312760%3Fshowall%3Dtrue&fbclid=IwY2xjawTdXr1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFsZDRnSzNWVjZaSmoyenE5c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHijQ_7r8bz_afoadxqRClWOasJAAsqDAvUY26nHK_kQTbPNztph4yLVxraG7_aem_cRQbAAVTwudoi_eHbWvB5Q