“In lieu of real progress we have created a system of enormous complexity and unknown treatment utility. There are over 10 million combinations of signs and symptoms that can yield a DSM diagnosis, and if specifiers are included, that number soars to 161 septillion (Borgogna et al., 2024). Diagnostic criteria allow for incredible combinatorial heterogeneity – for example, there are 636,120 ways of being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Galatzer-Levy & Bryant, 2013).”
— S. C. Hayes et al., Clinical Psychology Review (2026)
The increasing complexity of psychological classification raises an important question: Are we improving our understanding of human suffering, or merely multiplying the ways we categorize it?
— Nathan Chua