The ICD-11 Diagnoses in the Mental Health Field - An Innovative Mixture.

Abstract

The development of ICD-11 in the mental health field has been innovative in several ways. Perhaps most notable is that it has become equally relevant to clinicians and re­ searchers. Before discussing these two aspects in more detail, it should be mentioned that the processes by which the ICD-11 was created were also innovative and, moreover, that clinical psychologists and psychiatrists were equally involved at several crucial points in the ICD-11 development. This began with Dr. Geoffrey Reed, a US clinical and medical psychologist, as the responsible WHO senior project officer for new developments in the mental health field and who set important impulses at all stages of the process (e.g., Reed, 2010). From the beginning, the Lebanese psychologist Brigitte Khoury and the Mexican psy­ chologist Maria Elena Medina-Mora served on the International Advisory Group for this field. Both have published on important milestones and outcomes of regional meetings (Khoury et al., 2011; Medina-Mora et al., 2019). Furthermore, the author of this editorial, in his capacity as a psychologist, was one of the working group leaders of the ICD-11 development (Maercker et al., 2013). This new way of composing decision-making bodies represented an important step in the development of the international Mental and Be­ havioral Disorder classification. This was further supported by the inclusion of clinicians and researchers from the fields of clinical social work and psychiatric nursing sciences in the committees. Thus, the whole ICD-11 development relied on a very multidisciplinary process.