Clinical decisions and stigmatizing attitudes towards mental health problems in primary care physicians from Latin American countries

Objective The aim of this paper is to investigate how doctors working in primary health care in Latin American address patients with common mental disorders and to investigate how stigma can affect their clinical decisions. Methods Using a cross-sectional design, we applied an online self-administered questionnaire to a sample of 550 Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) from Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba and Chile. The questionnaire collected information about sociodemographic variables, training and experience with mental health care. Clinicians’ stigmatizing attitudes towards mental health were measured using the Mental Illness Clinicians' Attitudes Scale (MICA v4). The clinical decisions of PCPs were assessed through three clinical vignettes representing typical cases of depression, anxiety and somatization. Results A total of 387 professionals completed the questionnaires (70.3% response rate). The 63.7% of the PCPs felt qualified to diagnose and treat people with common mental disorders. More than 90% of the PCPs from Bolivia, Cuba and Chile agreed to treat the patients presented in the three vignettes. We did not find significant differences between the four countries in the scores of the MICA v4 stigma levels, with a mean = 36.3 and SD = 8.3 for all four countries. Gender (p = .672), age (p = .171), training (p = .673) and years of experience (p = .28) were unrelated to stigma. In the two multivariate regression models, PCPs with high levels of stigma were more likely to refer them to a psychiatrist the patients with depression (OR = 1.03, 95% CI, 0.99 to 1.07 p<0.05) and somatoform symptoms somatoform (OR = 1.03, 95% CI, 1.00 to 1.07, p<0.05) to a psychiatrist. Discussion The majority of PCPs in the four countries were inclined to treat patients with depression, anxiety and somatoform symptoms. PCPs with more levels of stigma were more likely to refer the patients with depression and somatoform symptoms to a psychiatrist. Stigmatizing attitudes towards mental disorders by PCPs might be important barriers for people with mental health problems to receive the treatment they need in primary care

Global Collaborative Team Performance for the Revision of the International Classification of Diseases: A Case Study of the World Health Organization Field Studies Coordination Group

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.Background/Objective: Collaborative teamwork in global mental health presents unique challenges, including the formation and management of international teams composed of multicultural and multilingual professionals with different backgrounds in terms of their training, scientific expertise, and life experience. The purpose of the study was to analyze the performance of the World Health Organization (WHO) Field Studies Coordination Group (FSCG) using an input-processes-output (IPO) team science model to better understand the team's challenges, limitations, and successes in developing the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Method: We thematically analyzed a collection of written texts, including FSCG documents and open-ended qualitative questionnaires, according to the conceptualization of the input-processes-output model of team performance. Results: The FSCG leadership and its members experienced and overcame numerous barriers to become an effective international team and to successfully achieve the goals set forth by WHO. Conclusions: Research is necessary regarding global mental health collaboration to understand and facilitate international collaborations with the goal of contributing to a deeper understanding of mental health and to reduce the global burden of mental disorders around the world

Validez de las categorías relacionadas con la identidad de genero en la CIE-11 y el DSM-5 entre personas transgenero que buscan procedimientos medicos que afirmen su genero

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE : The most recent versions of the two main mental disorders classifications-the World Health Organization's ICD-11 and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5-differ substantially in their diagnostic categories related to transgender identity. ICD-11 gender incongruence (GI), in contrast to DSM-5 gender dysphoria (GD), is explicitly not a mental disorder; neither distress nor dysfunction is a required feature. The objective was compared ICD-11 and DSM-5 diagnostic requirements in terms of their sensitivity, specificity, discriminability and ability to predict the use of gender-affirming medical procedures. METHOD : A total of 649 of transgender adults in six countries completed a retrospective structured interview. RESULTS : Using ROC analysis, sensitivity of the diagnostic requirements was equivalent for both systems, but ICD-11 showed greater specificity than DSM-5. Regression analyses indicated that history of hormones and/or surgery was predicted by variables that are an intrinsic aspect of GI/GD more than by distress and dysfunction. IRT analyses showed that the ICD-11 diagnostic formulation was more parsimonious and contained more information about caseness than the DSM-5 model. CONCLUSIONS : This study supports the ICD-11 position that GI/GD is not a mental disorder; additional diagnostic requirements of distress and/or dysfunction in DSM-5 reduce the predictive power of the diagnostic model.Partially funded by unrestricted grants by the World Health Organization Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse to participating institutions in Brazil, India, Lebanon, Mexico, and South Africa for the development and implementation of ICD-11 field studies. Financial support for the French study was provided by the Direction Générale de la Santé (DGS), Ministry of Health, France.http://www.elsevier.es/ijchpam2023Psychiatr

Validity of categories related to gender identity in ICD-11 and DSM-5 among transgender individuals who seek gender-affirming medical procedures

Background/Objective: The most recent versions of the two main mental disorders classifications—the World Health Organization's ICD-11 and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM–5—differ substantially in their diagnostic categories related to transgender identity. ICD-11 gender incongruence (GI), in contrast to DSM-5 gender dysphoria (GD), is explicitly not a mental disorder; neither distress nor dysfunction is a required feature. The objective was compared ICD-11 and DSM-5 diagnostic requirements in terms of their sensitivity, specificity, discriminability and ability to predict the use of gender-affirming medical procedures. Method: A total of 649 of transgender adults in six countries completed a retrospective structured interview. Results: Using ROC analysis, sensitivity of the diagnostic requirements was equivalent for both systems, but ICD-11 showed greater specificity than DSM-5. Regression analyses indicated that history of hormones and/or surgery was predicted by variables that are an intrinsic aspect of GI/GD more than by distress and dysfunction. IRT analyses showed that the ICD-11 diagnostic formulation was more parsimonious and contained more information about caseness than the DSM-5 model. Conclusions: This study supports the ICD-11 position that GI/GD is not a mental disorder; additional diagnostic requirements of distress and/or dysfunction in DSM-5 reduce the predictive power of the diagnostic model

Taxonomy and utility in the diagnostic classification of mental disorders

Objective One strategy for improving the clinical utility of mental health diagnostic systems is to better align them with how clinicians conceptualize psychopathology in practice. This approach was used in International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD‐11) development, but its underlying assumption—a link between taxonomic “fit” and clinical utility—remains untested. Methods Using data from global mental health clinician samples (combined N = 5404), we investigated the association between taxonomic fit and clinical utility in mental disorder categories. Results The overall association between fit and utility was positive (r = 0.19) but statistically not different from zero (95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.06, 0.43) in this small sample (N = 39 ICD/DSM categories). However, a positive association became clear after correcting for outliers (r = 0.34 [0.05, 0.58] or higher). Further insights were apparent for specific diagnoses given their locations in the scatterplot. Conclusions Results suggest a positive link between taxonomic fit and clinical utility in mental disorder diagnoses, highlighting future research directions

Can clinicians use dimensional information to make a categorical diagnosis of paraphilic disorders? An ICD-11 field study

Background: the diagnosis of paraphilic disorder is a complicated clinical judgment based on the integration of information from multiple dimensions to arrive at a categorical (present/absent) conclusion. The recent update of the guidelines for paraphilic disorders in ICD-11 presents an opportunity to investigate how mental health professionals use the diagnostic guidelines to arrive at a diagnosis which thereby can optimize the guidelines for clinical use.Aim: this study examined clinicians’ ability to use the ICD-11 diagnostic guidelines for paraphilic disorders which contain multiple dimensions that must be simultaneously assessed to arrive at a diagnosis.Methods: the study investigated the ability of 1,263 international clinicians to identify the dimensions of paraphilic disorder in the context of written case vignettes that varied on a single dimension only.Outcomes: participants provided diagnoses for the case vignettes along with dimensional ratings of the degree of presence of five dimensions of paraphilic disorder (arousal, consent, action, distress, and risk).Results: across a series of analyses, clinicians demonstrated a clear ability to recognize and appropriately integrate the dimensions of paraphilic disorders; however, there was some evidence that clinicians may over-diagnose non-pathological cases.Clinical Translation: clinicians would likely benefit from targeted training on the ICD-11 definition of paraphilic disorder and should be cautious of over-diagnosing.Strengths and Limitations: this study represents a large international sample of health professionals and is the first to examine clinicians’ ability to apply the ICD-11 diagnostic guidelines for paraphilic disorders. Important limitations include not generalizing to all clinicians and acknowledging that results may be different in direct clinical interactions vs written case vignettes.Conclusion: these results indicate that clinicians appear capable of interpreting and implementing the diagnostic guidelines for paraphilic disorders in ICD-11

Metodología basada en viñetas para el estudio de toma de decisiones clínicas: validez, utilidad y aplicación en los estudios de campo de la CIE-11

Las metodologías basadas en viñetas se utilizan frecuentemente para examinar los procesos de toma de decisiones, incluyendo los de profesionales sanitarios. No obstante, existen dudas respecto a si las viñetas reflejan adecuadamente los fenómenos del “mundo real” permitiendo así resultados y conclusiones válidas. Ofrecemos una visión de las características, variaciones de diseño, fortalezas y debilidades de estos estudios para examinar cómo los profesionales forman juicios clínicos (como el diagnóstico y tratamiento). Siendo “híbridos” de las encuestas tradicionales y los métodos experimentales, estos estudios pueden ofrecer tanto la alta validez interna de los experimentos como la alta validez externa de las encuestas, al aislar múltiples factores predictivos del comportamiento de los clínicos. Un diseño adecuado para poner a prueba preguntas específicas acerca de los juicios y la toma de decisiones permite resultados altamente generalizables a la “vida real”, sin las limitaciones éticas, prácticas y científicas de los métodos alternativos (como la observación, el auto-informe, la evaluación de pacientes estandarizados, o el análisis de archivos clínicos). Concluimos con recomendaciones metodológicas que se ilustran tras una descripción del uso de las metodologías de viñetas para investigar las decisiones diagnósticas de los clínicos en los estudios de campo controlados de la clasificación de los trastornos mentales y del comportamiento en la CIE-11