New diagnostic manual unveiled for mental health diagnoses
WHO initiative aims to support healthcare professionals
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a comprehensive diagnostic manual geared towards advancing the identification and understanding of mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Titled ‘The Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements for ICD-11 Mental, Behavioural, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ICD-11 CDDR),’ the new manual represents a significant leap forward in supporting qualified healthcare professionals.
Diverse clinical settings
Crafted with the latest scientific evidence and best clinical practices, the ICD-11 CDDR aims to equip mental health professionals and non-specialist health practitioners like primary care physicians, nurses, occupational therapists, and social workers with the tools needed to accurately diagnose these disorders in diverse clinical settings.
Dévora Kestel, Director of the Mental Health and Substance Use Department at WHO, highlighted the critical role of accurate diagnosis as the initial step toward receiving appropriate care and treatment.
She said, “By supporting clinicians in identifying and diagnosing mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental disorders, this new ICD-11 diagnostic manual will ensure more people can access the quality care and treatment they need.”
Key features of the manual include:
- Expanded diagnostic categories: The ICD-11 CDDR incorporates guidance for newly added categories, such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder, gaming disorder, and prolonged grief disorder. This enhancement enables health professionals to recognise better distinct clinical features of these disorders that may have gone undiagnosed and untreated.
- Lifespan approach: The manual adopts a lifespan approach to mental, behavioural, and neurological disorders, considering how these conditions manifest in childhood, adolescence, and older adults.
- Culture-related guidance: The manual acknowledges the systematic differences in disorder presentations based on cultural backgrounds by providing culture-related guidance for each disorder.
- Dimensional approaches: The ICD-11 CDDR incorporates dimensional approaches, acknowledging that many symptoms and disorders exist on a continuum with typical functioning, particularly in personality disorders.
Developed through a rigorous, multi-disciplinary, and participatory approach involving hundreds of experts and thousands of clinicians worldwide, the ICD-11 CDDR represents a significant stride towards improving mental health diagnoses.
The valuable resource ensures that specialists and non-specialists can contribute to understanding and addressing mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental disorders for better patient outcomes.
– The CDDR are a clinical version of ICD-11 and thus complementary to the statistical reporting of health information, referred to as the linearisation for mortality and morbidity statistics (MMS).
– The WHO’s Eleventh Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) is a global standard for reporting diseases and health-related conditions. It provides standardised nomenclature and common health language for health practitioners worldwide.
– ICD-11 was adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2019 and came into effect formally in January 2022.
Featured image: The ICD-11 CDDR aims to equip mental health professionals and non-specialist health practitioners with the tools to accurately diagnose disorders in diverse clinical settings. Credit: Anthony Tran
