The criteria we could apply in validating a categorization system would be these:
1. Each category should be characterized by recognizable signs, characteristics, and courses of development.
2. Each category should be associated with conditions or behaviors that bring human distress to the client -- and to important others around them.
3. Each category should be associated with modalities of intervention which work reliably to reduce distress and improve life function and adult independence
4. Each category should be distinct from other categories in its character and interventions.
5. Every category should be observed often enough in society at large to justify research investment in validating its modalities of intervention and educational investment in training practitioners to manage it.
We could imagine that they might include:
Sadness
Madness
Melancholy
Anxiety
Panic
Phobias
Obsession
Compulsion
Paranoia
Catatonia
Trauma-related problems in children
Trauma-related problems in adults
Non-physical problems attending physical illness
plus there might be a group of behaviors that, if they meet the criteria above, could go here:
Challenges of learning and perception that meet the criteria above
Challenges of social adjustment that meet the criteria above
Family and relationship issues that meet the criteria above
We would exclude hysteria as a category, because of its dubious history of harms through psychosomatic medicine. There are also no reliable treatments for the so-called "functional neurological symptoms" which characterize it.
July 25 2014
edited May, 2016.