The differences between syndrome, disorder and disease

In the field of health and psychology, the use of three key concepts is very frequent: syndrome, disorder and disease.

These are words with great force, because at a popular level they are usually associated with the lack of health and body problems, some of which could be chronic and therefore not have cure. However, This does not mean that in scientific, academic and health settings they are used synonymously. In fact, they are not.

We will now examine the differences between disease, syndrome, and disorder, but first we must clarify the meaning of the word "symptom" in order to understand all the rest.

What is a symptom?

In the field of health, a symptom is the expression of an abnormal state, that is, the consequence of a phenomenon that is manifesting itself in a body. Thus, a symptom could be a warning sign that a patient may have their health compromised in some way, or it could be a "false alarm".

That is, a symptom can be many, many things, and the fact that they are present does not serve as definitive confirmation that someone's health is compromised: for example,

a patient may say that their head hurts (symptom) without this being a sign that they have a disease.

Syndrome

A syndrome is a set of symptoms that occur together and that has already been studied previously and that, therefore, it has been identified as a clinical picture linked to one or more health problems. Thus, in a syndrome there are a series of symptoms that occur together very frequently. However, the symptoms that make up a syndrome can vary over time and therefore it can disappear.

What is the difference between a syndrome and a disease? Now we will see.

The illness

The concept of disease, like that of syndrome, is a clinical entity, and therefore has to do with health problems. However, if a syndrome is nothing more than a set of symptoms already studied and identified as something that has its own entity by having a typical way of manifesting itself, a disease must present, in addition to one or more symptoms, or recognizable changes in the body either a known biological cause (or both).

In other words, a syndrome, being essentially a set of symptoms, does not have to have a known cause or develop at the same time as anatomical alterations.

Thus, some syndromes may be the manifestation of a disease, but others may not, since their causes may be as biological as, for example, social.

What is a disorder?

In generic terms, by disorder can be understood simply an alteration of the state of health normal due to illness or not. The area in which it is most common to talk about disorders is that of mental health. A mental disorder is often understood as a maladaptive (and therefore problematic) change that affects mental processes.

Many times the term disorder is used as a looser way of referring to the disease in those cases in which the causes are not very clear and the possible anatomical alterations with which it is associated can be both a cause or a consequence hers. In the case of mental disorders this is done a lot, since many times it is not very clear if biochemical imbalances associated with some disorders are what produce the symptoms or are a product of a dynamic of interaction between the person and their environment.

In this way, the concept of disorder serves simply to describe the signs of the abnormal and altered state of health in which a person is found, while the disease indicates a causal relationship, because it includes the specific causes (etiology) of the lack of health.

• Related article: "The 16 most common mental disorders"

The disorder as a result of a dynamic of interaction

And what is the other way to understand the meaning of the term disorder when talking about mental disorders? Well, precisely, it is the one that has to do with emphasizing the way in which the individual has related and continues relating to the environment, instead of understanding by disorder something static, related to genetics, disease and the lesions. A disorder can actually be the consequence of having been involved in a set of situations linked to the context in which we live and that cause us to have entered into a dynamic of behaviors that harm our Health.

The cause of the disorder, therefore, does not have to be able to be reduced to a very specific part of the brain that works abnormally, but could be distributed in all those actions that make up a cycle: we act in a way because we perceive things in a way because we act in a mode, etc.

Thus, the frame of reference that helps us to know what we mean when we talk about what a disorder is is the following: Are disorders discovered by humans, or are they constructed by humans? Answering this question is not straightforward, and the nature of this debate has to do with both science and philosophy.