Letter to the Editor: EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THE ICD-11 CHAPTER ON MENTAL DISORDERS

Dear Editor, The 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), including the chapter on mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders, has been adopted unanimously by the 72nd World Health Assembly in Geneva on May 25, 2019. The endorsement of the new classification will not come into effect until January 1, 2022. Until that date, the Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) will keep on using the ICD-10 for reporting data. The most significant innovations in the ICD-11 chapter, and the most important differences from the DSM-5, have been detailed elsewhere (Reed et al. 2019). Several issues debated in the process of development of the chapter - including the role of a dimensional component within a system that remains mainly based on categories, and the need for a further clinical characterization of the individual patient, in addition to the diagnosis, in order to guide the formulation of the prognosis and the management plan, have been also covered in the recent literature (Clark et al. 2017, Rebello et al. 2019, Fuss et al. 2019, Gureje et al. 2019, van Os et al. 2019, Fusar-Poli et al. 2019, Forbes et al. 2019, Gaebel et al. 2019, Patel 2019, Kotov et al. 2020, Maj et al. 2020, Sanislow et al. 2020). The training of professionals in the use of the ICD-11 chapter is now ongoing worldwide, under the coordination of a WHO International Advisory Group led by G.M. Reed. Educational courses have been conducted at the 18th and 19th World Congresses of Psychiatry (Mexico City, Mexico, September 27-30, 2018; and Lisbon, Portugal, August 21-24, 2019) (Giallonardo 2019, Pocai 2019, Perris 2020). A more comprehensive online 20-hr training course has been organized by the Naples WHO Collaborating Centre on Research and Training in Mental Health and the European Psychiatric Association from 9 to 30 April, 2021. The course has been coordinated by G.M. Reed and M. Maj, and has covered all the main sections of the ICD-11 chapter on mental disorders. W. Gaebel, M. Cloitre, M. Maj, C.S. Kogan, P. Monteleone, M. Swales, J.B. Saunders and N.A. Fineberg composed the Faculty. The live course has been attended by 120 psychiatrists, selected from almost 500 applicants, representing 78 different countries. A further group of 250 psychiatrists have had access to the course on demand. Two ICD-11 training sessions have been organized by the Psychiatric Association of Turkey within its 24th Clinical Education