Which of the following is NOT among the replacement concepts for culture-bound syndromes in DSM-5?

• A. Cultural Stratification
• B. Cultural Syndromes
• C. Cultural Concepts
• D. Cultural Variants

Answer: (A)

The key idea is that DSM-5 moved away from “culture-bound syndromes” to a cohesive framework called cultural concepts of distress. This umbrella includes three related ideas: cultural syndromes (shared patterns of symptoms recognized within a culture), cultural idioms of distress (the ways people in a culture express distress in language or action), and cultural explanations of distress (the culturally shaped meanings or causes people attribute to their suffering). These concepts help clinicians interpret symptoms within the patient’s cultural context.

Cultural syndromes are a direct part of this framework, as are the cultural concepts of distress (often used as shorthand for the umbrella term). Cultural variants aren’t a standard DSM-5 term, but they would not be the formal category. Cultural stratification, however, is a sociological notion about how societies rank people and groups; it isn’t a clinical replacement concept used in DSM-5 for understanding distress. So the one that doesn’t fit the DSM-5 replacement framework is cultural stratification.