Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Vagueness in psychiatry: an overview -- 2. Mental and physical gradualism in Graeco-Roman medicine -- 3. Disease as a vague and thick cluster concept -- 4. Disease entities and the borderline between health and disease: where is the place of gradations? -- 5. Indeterminacy in medical classification: on continuity, uncertainty, and vagueness -- 6. Psychiatric diagnosis, tacit knowledge and criteria --7. Fuzzy boundaries and tough decisions in psychiatry -- 8. Reflections on what is normal, what is not, and fuzzy boundaries in psychiatric classifications -- 9. Vagueness, the sorites paradox, and posttraumatic stress disorder -- 10. Moral and legal implications of the continuity between delusional and non-delusional beliefs -- 11. Mental illness versus mental disorder: arugments and forensic implications -- 12. The American experience with the categorical ban against executing the intellectually disabled: new frontiers and unresolved questions -- 13. Typical and atypical mental disorders: moral implications for academic-industry collaborations.

In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of subthreshold disorders and of the prodromal stages of diseases are notoriously contentious. Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, 'vague'. Although blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in many publications concerned with the classification of mental disorders, systematic approaches that take into account philosophical reflections on vagueness are rare. This book provides interdisciplinary discussions about vagueness in psychiatry by bringing together scholars from psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, history, and law. It draws together various lines of inquiry into the nature of gradations between mental health and disease and discusses the individual and societal consequences of dealing with blurred boundaries in medical practice, forensic psychiatry, and beyond. --