Abstract. ICD-11, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2019, introduces changes in the classification, conceptualization, and the diagnostics of different psychiatric disorders. One of the main changes is in the newly differentiated group “Schizophrenia and other primary psychotic disorders”, where the traditional subtypes of schizophrenia (such as paranoid, hebephrenic, etc.) are replaced by a system of six symptom specifiers (positive symptoms, negative symptoms, depressive symptoms, manic symptoms, psychomotor symptoms, and cognitive symptoms) with a four-point intensity scale (absent, mild, moderate, and severe symptoms). The benefits of this change would include a more accurate representation of the clinical case, improved clinical communication, better longitudinal tracking, as well as acquisition of more differentiated epidemiological data to serve the healthcare system and facilitate research. Potential problems with this system include the unclear reliability of the generated data, the uncertain clinical applicability and acceptance by clinicians, the inclusion of the factor functioning in determining symptom severity, as well as questions surrounding the conceptualization of individual symptom groups and differences with DSM-5.

Key words: schizophrenia, primary psychotic disorders ICD-11, symptom specifiers

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