This article discusses the diagnosis and conceptualization of suicide. Addressing suicide and related phenomena is a top priority in mental health care but is not adequately reflected in the current categorical diagnostic system, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Fifth Edition, Text Revision. Suicide demonstrates the pitfalls of categorical conceptualization of psychopathology and should be thoroughly examined within dimensional frameworks. This is particularly relevant as development of the newest iteration of the DSM-and renewed discussion of diagnosis and conceptualization of psychopathology-begins. The categorical nature of diagnosis has been critiqued at length, with the proposed alternative positing transdiagnostic dimensions that account for overlaps across and variations within diagnoses. Suicide and related phenomena do not appear as a distinct psychopathology/diagnosis in the DSM, Fifth Edition, Text Revision, instead comprising a symptom/criterion for only two of the almost 300 disorders. A transdiagnostic conceptualization of suicide aligns with historical and modern theories of suicide, none of which focus on psychiatric diagnoses as primary explanatory factors in suicide, and most of which emphasize transdiagnostic patterns of distress and biopsychosocial processes that better explain suicidal behavior. Discussion to date about limitations of the current diagnostic system regarding suicide has focused on adding suicide-related diagnoses or even positing an additional suicide-related axis when the DSM previously used an axial structure. Based on the characteristics of suicide and related phenomena described previously, the author hypothesizes that suicide-related processes comprise higher level dimensions-including a range of nonpathological (e.g., developmental changes in acceptance of death) to pathological phenomena and factors aligned with suicide theory (e.g., capability)-that interact with cross-cutting psychopathological and biopsychosocial factors to lead to varying phenotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Julie Lutz (Thu,) studied this question.