  Successive editions of the DSM have been published in North America, and questions have always arisen about the applicability of its categories outside the West. DSM-5 follows its predecessor in coping with cross-cultural variety in two ways. First, some conditions, such as depression and anxiety, are treated as universal – found in every culture, despite local differences in character. We may term this the unificationist project. The DSM-IV-TR averred that major DSM categories occur all around the world but with symptoms and courses that are influenced by local cultural factors.  Second, DSM-IV-TR employed the concept of culture-bound syndromes, which were defined as “recurrent, locality-specific patterns of aberrant behavior and troubling experience that may or may not be linked to a particular DSM-IV diagnostic category” (p. 898). Culture-bound syndromes occur in a limited number of specific societies or cultural areas.  They are local, often traditional, diagnostic categories that make sense of patterns of thought and behaviour that are treated as deviant or troubling in that context. 