Does psychiatry need an overarching concept of “mental disorder”? World Psychiatry

been expounding, with minor modifica-tions, a persuasive and influential point of view on the concept of mental disor-der as “harmful dysfunction ” (HD), which postulates a conjunction of a val-ue term (harm) and a factual scientific term (dysfunction). This “hybrid ” defi-nition resolves the previously irrevoca-ble polarity between the “social-con-structivist ” position (mental disorder is a value-laden social construct with no counterpart in biomedical reality) and the “objectivist ” position (mental disor-ders are natural entities that could be understood in biological terms). In th