Main description:

A Companion to the Classification of Mental Disorders provides essential reading as a background and supplement to both the recently produced DSM-5 and the forthcoming ICD-11. It focuses on the processes of classification and diagnosis, and the uses for these classifications. The book emphasises the dangers of regarding any current psychiatric classification as true or complete, in view of the present partial state of knowledge about the causes and
mechanisms of most mental and behavioural disorders.
This book is unique in containing a number of chapters that give a brief history of the cooperative efforts and projects necessary for the production of internationally agreed psychiatric classifications. The discussion begins in 1965 with the US/UK Diagnostic study, the preparations for ICD-8 with its first international glossary, and the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia, designed and coordinated by the World Health Organization. While recognizing the importance of the innovations of
the DSM series of classifications of the American Psychiatric Association, the book also takes a truly international perspective. The expert authors are well placed to do this, having been personally involved in many of the collaborative studies and developments discussed.
A Companion to the Classification of Mental Disorders is an illustration of how much international collaborative work has been necessary over several decades to produce the currently agreed classifications. There is still a long way to go, but a start has been made.

Contents:

1. Problems before agreed psychiatric classifications were available ; 2. First steps towards international agreement on diagnosis and classification ; 3. Large-scale collaborative studies on diagnosis ; 4. Developments in the USA ; 5. The first internationally understandable epidemiological studies ; 6. Large community-based diagnostic studies in the USA ; 7. Other large community-based diagnostic surveys ; 8. Some problems with research methods used in psychiatric surveys ; 9. Translation and use of interviewing schedules in more than one language and culture ; 10. Towards international agreement on classification ; 11. Communication between different health care professions ; 12. Understanding classification ; 13. Special problems for psychiatric classification ; 14. Diagnosis in psychiatry ; 15. Classification beyond the diagnosis ; 16. Multi-axial classification ; 17. Psychiatric classification in an international perspective ; 18. Using a psychiatric classification ; 19. The future