Nineteen years have elapsed since the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD‐10), and many advances have been made in the field of personality disorders since that time. This paper reflects these advances and presents the first proposals of the ICD‐11 working group for the reclassification of personality disorders. The essential changes from ICD‐10 are to make the primary classification of personality disorder one of five levels of severity, including one of personality difficulty below the severity of disorder, to replace the existing categories of personality disorder with five monothetic trait domains of asocial, emotionally unstable, obsessional (anankastic), anxious/dependent and dissocial groups and to provide a simple algorithm for classification that can be used in ordinary psychiatric practice. It is argued that the proposed changes will improve the clinical utility of the diagnosis of personality disorder, reduce its stigma and help in the development and selection of appropriate treatment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sustainable implementation of DBT, as with other evidence-based interventions, requires organisational support that incorporates a strategy for further staff training and development.

Patients with BPD have difficulties in recalling specific autobiographical memories. These difficulties are related to their tendency to dissociate and may help them to avoid episodic information that would evoke acutely negative affect.

The 11th revision of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) includes a fundamentally new approach to Personality Disorders (PD). ICD-11 is expected to be implemented first in European countries before other WHO member states. The present paper provides an overview of this new ICD-11 model including PD severity classification, trait domain specifiers, and the additional borderline pattern specifier. We discuss the perceived challenges and opportunities of using the ICD-11 approach with particular focus on its continuity and discontinuity with familiar PD categories such as avoidant PD and narcissistic PD. The advent of the ICD-11 PD classification involves major changes for health care workers, researchers, administrators, and service providers as well as patients and families involved. The anticipated challenges and opportunities are put forward in terms of specific unanswered questions. It is our hope that these questions will stimulate further research and discussion among researchers and clinicians in the coming years.