The death of normality: Commentary on Fernandes, Gomes, and Morgado (2025)

Comments on Fernandes et al. (see record 2026-12254-001). Fernandes et al. offer a tempered and nuanced assessment of normality's proliferation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), framing it as a definitional problem in need of clarification. Yet the steady rise of "normality"-related terminology across DSM editions-from eight mentions in DSM-I to 198 in DSM-5-signals not a semantic drift, but a deepening reliance on a concept that has never withstood serious epistemological scrutiny. "If psychiatry intends to continue relying heavily on the concept of normality," write Fernandes et al., "it should clarify how 'normal' relates to health and, ultimately, define what 'normal' truly means" (p. 605). But what if it should not? This commentary takes a more radical position: The term "normal" is not salvageable. Scientifically nebulous, culturally loaded, and historically tainted, normality is an epistemic relic better discarded than redefined. To their credit, Fernandes et al. acknowledge the growing traction of dimensional models of mental health, which move beyond rigid categories. But they stop short of confronting the conceptual deadweight "normal" brings into this future. A truly dimensional psychiatry cannot continue to rely on normality as a reference point. Doing so is akin to measuring nonlinear phenomena with a broken ruler. "Normal" presumes a fixed center against which deviation is judged-a logic that dimensional thinking must reject outright. We need a postnormal psychiatry-one that abandons the essentialist scaffolding of "normal versus abnormal" and instead builds on terms like distress, impairment, risk, and resilience. But even these must be situated within systems that account for power, culture, and structural inequality. Swapping in new words while retaining the same old architecture is not enough. The shift must be conceptual, not cosmetic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).