Multiaxial Classification of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders: The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders in Children and Adolescents

by World Health Organization, Michael J. Rutter (Introduction)

In making a diagnosis, individual psychiatrists inevitably accord differing importance to various features in a patient's history. By regulating the order and number of conditions to be recorded, a multiaxial framework provides for internationally comparable descriptions of mental state. This volume provides the psychiatric sections of ICD-10 in a form that is adapted for ease of use by those dealing with mental disorders in childhood and adolescence. Descriptions have been grouped into axes that have been chosen to provide unambiguous information of maximum clinical usefulness in the greatest number of cases. Building on the popular original framework of four axes, the system has been greatly improved by the inclusion of a new axis for psychosocial situations and by the addition of yet another axis on adaptive level that enables clinicians to code an individual's current level of disability.

312 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 23, 2015

About the author

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group. Its predecessor, the Health Organization, was an agency of the League of Nations.

The constitution of the World Health Organization had been signed by 61 countries on 22 July 1946, with the first meeting of the World Health Assembly finishing on 24 July 1948. It incorporated the Office international d'hygiène publique and the League of Nations Health Organization. Since its creation, it has played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases; sexual and reproductive health, development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

The WHO is responsible for the World Health Report, a leading international publication on health, the worldwide World Health Survey, and World Health Day (7 April of every year)