Our aim is to present the first of four criteria previously described for determining the validity of psychiatric disorders across cultures [10, 67]. The lack of established biological and genetic markers that are specific and replicated across samples [45], imprecise measurement, and lack of a gold standard for validating most psychiatric conditions makes these criteria relevant for reaching an approximation of the validity of psychiatric disorders. The first of these criteria states that the syndrome or disorder should be described similarly across cultures. This can be accomplished by either anecdotal reports of mental health professionals or the collective clinical wisdom of these professionals in a given setting or by the systematic gathering and analyses of epidemiologic data [10]. Remaining criteria are related to differentiation or delimitation from other disorders, the commonality in clinical outcomes and differential treatment response, diagnostic consistency over time, differentiation of risk factors, genetic aggregation in families, and differentiation of disorders by laboratory studies (e.g., functional imaging) and will not be addressed in this paper [45, 67].
