Aim The ICD‐11 classification of personality disorders (PDs) has adopted a dimensional approach which includes three levels of severity (mild, moderate and severe) with the option of specifying five trait qualifiers (negative affectivity, detachment, dissociality, disinhibition and anankastia) and one borderline pattern qualifier. This study examined mental health professionals' perceived clinical utility of the ICD‐11 PD framework compared with the ICD‐10 categorical PD framework. Method A sample of 163 mental health professionals (primarily psychologists, nurses and medical doctors) completed a survey in which they were asked to apply the ICD‐10 and ICD‐11 PD classifications on one of their patients followed by judgement of their clinical utility. Results The ICD‐11 PD framework was generally rated as being slightly more useful than the ICD‐10 framework even when accounting for educational background and years of experience. This advantage particularly involved the utility for treatment planning, communicating with patients, comprehensiveness and ease of use. The two frameworks showed no significant differences with respect to utility for communicating with other professionals and describing global personality. Conclusion This study provided initial evidence that mental health professionals perceive the ICD‐11 PD classification as slightly more useful for clinical practice than the ICD‐10 classification. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

11th Edition (ICD-11) Classification of Personality Disorders provides the option of coding 5 trait domain qualifiers that contribute to the individual expression of personality dysfunction (i.e., Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, Disinhibition, and Anankastia). Previous investigations of these trait domains are based on self-reported data, and so is much of the research literature from which the ICD-11 trait model has evolved. However, the ICD-11 itself involves judgments made by clinicians about their patients. Thus, it is important to examine whether the trait domains identified in self-report studies can also be obtained from clinician-reported data. A sample of 238 mental health patients were characterized by clinicians using an informant-report form of the Personality Inventory for ICD-11 (PiCD-IRF). As expected, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) indicated that clinician-reported ICD-11 trait domains could be captured by both 4-and 5-factor structures, of which the 5-factor solution seemed less conceptually sound relative to the 4-factor solution.The 4-factor model captured the unipolar domains of Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, along with a bipolar domain of Disinhibition versus Anankastia, whereas the 5-factor model furthermore captured features of Disinhibition and Anankastia as 2 separate factors. The hierarchical structure from 1 to 5 factors partially resembled previously reported trait structures and models of psychopathology. These findings overall support the multimethod robustness of ICD-11 trait domain qualifiers and the potential for their valid ratings by mental health clinicians. The PiCD-IRF is provided in the online supplementary material -for clinical or research purposes.