A major goal of the next generation of psychiatric epidemiology is to establish a more precise and clinically relevant baseline. 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

There is currently no consistently applied or well-understood threshold for the presence of a categorical diagnosis. 

Threshold for mental disorder diagnoses

Widiger, T. A., & Samuel, D. B. (2005). Diagnostic categories or dimensions? A question for the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders--. Journal of abnormal psychology, 114(4), 494. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.114.4.494

Diagnostic categories or dimension? A question for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- Fifth Edition

Taking the example of subthreshold depression, the majority of cases of clinical depression go unrecognized and untreated. Patients with subthreshold levels of depression exhibit high rates of health care use and require substantial medical care costs. 

The problem with not having a well defined threshold

Suggestion for revision

Dimensional models can avoid misleading effort to carve psychological functioning at nonexistent discrete joints. Dimensional models can provide explicit means for recognizing subthreshold conditions and facilitate the development of demarcation between normal and abnormal psychological functioning. 

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