Definitions of mental disorder explicitly exclude culturally expected grief and social deviance

Evidence

Although no definition can capture all aspects of all disorders in the range contained in DSM-5, the following elements are required: A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1220

Categorization

• DEFINE: The DSM-5 gives necessary but not sufficient conditions: dysfunction plus distress, with grief and political/religious/sexual deviance explicitly carved out.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s running theme that concept definitions set boundaries which do normative work, as with democracy thresholds.