The Power Threat Meaning Framework: An Alternative Nondiagnostic Conceptual System

Abstract

This article summarizes the results of a recently published project to develop a conceptual system incorporating social, psychological, and biological factors as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis. The principles underlying the Power Threat Meaning Framework are briefly described, together with its major features and differences from diagnostic approaches. These include the assumptions that what may be called psychiatric symptoms are understandable responses to often very adverse environments and that these responses, both evolved and socially influenced, serve protective functions and demonstrate human capacity for meaning making and agency. We describe how the elements of the Power Threat Meaning Framework interact to restore links between environmental threats and threat responses, and to enable us to outline some probabilistic Provisional General Patterns, grouped by personal, social, and cultural meaning, describing what people do, not the “disorders” they “have.” We conclude by outlining some implications of the Framework for narrative construction and for thinking about distress across cultures.