Self-Injurious Behavior as a Separate Clinical Syndrome.

The field of clinical psychology may benefit from adopting a deliberate self-injury syndrome as a distinct disorder for representation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The phenomenological and empirical data supporting a deliberate self-injury syndrome are reviewed, and arguments for and against the adoption of a distinct syndrome are explored.