Abstract
The recent discussions over the reliability, validity, utility, humanity and epistemology of psychiatric diagnosis have had wider implications than might at first sight be apparent. Diagnosis is, for many people, both the entry-point to services and the starting-point for public debate. Challenges to the scientific and professional basis for diagnosis, therefore, can have profound implications. Such is the dominance of traditional diagnostic thinking about mental health care that it is often wrongly assumed that there is little alternative – or that any possible alternatives would require lengthy and expensive periods of development. In fact, there is no present impediment to the development of new ways of thinking and delivering services, and especially no impediment to practical and scientifically valid alternatives to diagnosis.