ICD-10 has attained goals which it had set for itself and its further development should be based on analysis of the results of its application.
Psychiatrists confine themselves to this qualification although it “pursues first of all statistic aims”. ICD-10 is of closed polythetic nature and it doesn’t contribute to development of clinic psychiatry and substitutes by itself clinical analysis.
The fundamental descriptive characteristic of “psychotic level” in ICD-10 had been rudely simplified for register of affective disorders before appearance of delusion and hallucinations.
In ICD-10 are combined and mixed two opposing principles: atheoreticity that is necessary for the natural classification and commitment to nosology. Implementation of these principles require a two-stage qualification. In the first stage it should be narrative detailed syndromological qualifications with identification of psychotic level of disorders. As for the second stage, the qualification should be nosological, based on complete clinical analysis, which is far from being possible to realize at once. ICD-10, specifically brought to nosological certainty, may remain the natural foundation for nosological qualification. Implementation of the syndromic qualification at the first stage will allow to consider nosological features of each syndrome at the second stage and to expand the list of criteria in different clusters. Such a suggestion opens the prospect for subsequent revisions of the ICD and allows to direct our efforts and those of practitioners to the unified channel, where the statistical goals would not be implemented at the expense of the research ones.