Lack of DSM-5 inclusion

CPTSD removes the stigma completely and also puts the "blame" for the upsetting symptoms squarely where it belongs, with the abusers. And in my opinion that's WHY it's not included in the DSM, because our society protects and enables abusers and couldn't abide holding them accountable.

I disagree. From a 2017 review on the topic, here is why experts have

Another new development for ICD-11 is the proposal for a sibling disorder, Complex PTSD (CPTSD). This is, in part, a reformulation in more specific terms of the previous ICD-10 diagnosis F62.0 “Enduring personality change after catastrophic experience” (EPCACE) and, like its predecessor, describes the disturbances in self-organization that can sometimes result from multiple, chronic or repeated traumas from which escape is difficult or impossible (e.g., childhood abuse, domestic violence, torture, war imprisonment). The ICD-11 CPTSD diagnosis is comprised of six symptom clusters: three are shared with PTSD (re-experiencing, avoidance, and sense of threat) and three additional symptom clusters related to disturbances in self-organization (DSO), specifically: affect dysregulation, negative self-concept and difficulties in relationships.
In contrast to EPCACE, CPTSD does not require a demonstrable personality change. However, the problems associated with CPTSD which reflect disturbances in self-organization are expected to be sustained and pervasive, and occur in a variety of contexts. Another diagnosis that has previously been suggested to capture responses to chronic or repeated trauma is “Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified” (DESNOS) which was included in the Appendix to DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The DESNOS diagnosis has been operationalized using 48 possible symptoms, organized into 6 scales and 27 subscales (Pelcovitz et al., 1997). ICD-11 CPTSD shares a similar conceptual frame as DESNOS, particularly the emphasis on affect dysregulation, negative self-concept and relational difficulties and is in part empirically derived from it. However, the proposed CPTSD diagnosis is expected to be comprised of 12 symptoms, in line with the ICD-11 emphasis on clinical utility, which includes limiting the number of symptoms that make up a diagnosis.
The decision to ground the CPTSD diagnosis in core PTSD symptoms, as well as problems in self-organization, derived largely from review of the empirical literature. Results from the DSM-5 field trial investigating DESNOS revealed substantially higher rates of endorsement of symptoms representative of disturbances in affective, self, and relational domains among those with early-life chronic trauma relative to those with other types of trauma history (van der Kolk, Roth, Pelcovitz, Sunday, & Spinazzola, 2005). The DSM-IV field trial data also found that nearly all of those who met criteria for DESNOS also met criteria for PTSD (Roth, Newman, Pelcovitz, van der Kolk, & Mandel, 1997), supporting the decision to incorporate the PTSD symptoms into the ICD-11 CPTSD diagnosis. The selection of the DSO symptoms was based on identifying those symptoms most frequently endorsed in the DSM-IV DESNOS field trial (van der Kolk, Roth, Pelcovitz, & Mandel, 1993) as well as those identified as most impairing by expert clinicians in a recent consensus survey on CPTSD (Cloitre et al., 2011).
In summary, ICD-11 CPTSD shares with EPCACE and DESNOS an emphasis on changes in self-organization and the expectation that these changes typically result from exposure to sustained or multiple traumas from which escape is difficult or impossible. In contrast to EPCACE, CPTSD does not describe these symptoms as personality changes and in contrast to DESNOS, the number of symptoms is relatively small. Unlike both disorders, CPTSD includes the three symptom clusters of re-experiencing, avoidance and threat. Lastly, in contrast to both disorders and consistent with ICD-11 PTSD, functional impairment is explicitly identified as a requirement for the disorder.
It has been debated whether or not complex PTSD is actually PTSD comorbid with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The proposed diagnostic requirements for CPTSD include several features that can be clearly differentiated from BPD. While both disorders share symptoms related to problems in emotion regulation, they are quite distinct in other symptom domains. BPD is typically characterized by an unstable sense of self that alternates between highly positive or negative self-evaluation and by emotionally intense and unstable relationships that vacillate between idealizing and denigrating perceptions of others. CPTSD in contrast is defined by a stable, although deeply negative sense of self and perceptions of relationships as painful and generally avoided. The presence of a trauma history is not a requirement for a diagnosis of BPD, while it is a prerequisite for the diagnosis of CPTSD. Data supporting these and other definitional differences, including endorsement of suicidality are discussed under the section of the manuscript concerning construct validity for CPTSD.

tl;dr CPTSD isn't a DSM diagnosis because experts some experts believed the syndrome was already captured by other diagnoses, EPCACE and/or DESNOS. The debate continues.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735817301460

/r/CPTSD Thread Parent