" ... the only way to develop better treatments for mental illness could be to scrap the category approach and go back to the drawing board. A different strategy would be to assume that the causes of mental illness are not divided according to the categories of the DSM, but spread much more evenly through the population. The symptoms that emerge do so only when the causative agent - - genes, environment, misfiring brain circuitry, whatever - - reach a certain threshold. Diagnosis then becomes a matter of tuning into the correct signal, rather than blindly punching clunky buttons until it crude approximation of a picture emerges (p 275). Because signs of subclinical psychosis are everywhere at subclinical levels in the general population (p 277) and a dimensional approach will give more useful results. The Man Who Couldn't Stop, David Adam, Crichton, 2014 (I enjoyed the author's style, content, stories. Recommended. Sylvia) Powered by LSoft's LISTSERV(R) list management software