  The unificationist project is an empirical bet that is based on the assumption that human psychology is enough alike to treat at least some culturally distinctive forms of mental disorder as expressions of a shared human nature that is differently shaped by local culture. The appeal to culture bound syndromes is also a perfectly good bet, reflecting the idea that some forms of behaviour are entirely local and not assimilable to a universal model.  Both unificationism and recognition of culture-bound syndromes could be pursued at the same time. Given the boring but probably correct observation that people around the world are both alike and different, that may be the obvious course.  However, pursuit of these strategies should be freed from the apparent assumption in DSM-5 that western minds are the blueprint for the world. The western form of a condition may be unusual: the more we look, the more it seems as though the cognitive aspects of depression – the complex psychology of self-blame and immiserating introspection – may be distinctively Western. There may be conditions that DSM treats as universal but which in fact are culture-bound syndromes that only exist in NATO countries.