Psychology Today | 09.09.2026 01:44
In medicine, we try very hard to turn the symptoms that people present with into a diagnosis that can help guide optimal treatment. It’s a system that sounds great but, in reality, often falls short. Despite the approximately 300 different mental health diagnoses contained within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders, it is extremely common that the clinical picture a patient/client describes doesn’t fit neatly into any of them. Many of us train for years trying to learn and understand the details and nuances of all these conditions, only to find out that our patients never got the memo and come to us with a mishmash of symptoms that aren’t supposed to go together and span multiple different categories, or none at all.
