Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV organises mental disorders into roughly four hundred descriptive categories, each defined by explicit criteria, associated features, course, and differential diagnosis. It records a case across five axes: Axis I for clinical disorders, Axis II for personality disorders and mental retardation, Axis III for general medical conditions, Axis IV for psychosocial and environmental problems, and Axis V for the Global Assessment of Functioning. The five-axis frame keeps character structure and life circumstance on the same page as the presenting complaint.

The American Psychiatric Association published the fourth edition in 1994 under a task force chaired by Allen Frances, extending the criteria-based method DSM-III introduced in 1980. A text revision, DSM-IV-TR, followed in 2000, updating the descriptive and epidemiological passages while leaving the criteria largely intact. DSM-5 retired the multiaxial system in 2013, folding its axes into a single list, so DSM-IV remains the last edition in which Axis II and Axis IV carried personality and context as separate, recorded dimensions.