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About

Michael B. First MD, is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, and is a Research Psychiatrist at the Biometrics Department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and maintains a schematherapy and psychopharmacology practice in Manhattan, Dr. First is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on psychiatric diagnosis and assessment issues and has conducted expert forensic psychiatric evaluations in both civil and criminal matters, including the 2006 trial of the 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. Dr. First is the Editorial and Coding Consultant for the DSM-5, the chief technical and editorlal consultant on the World Health Organization's ICD-11 revision project, and is an external consultant to the NIMH Research Domain Criteria project. Dr. First got his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, received a Masters in Computer Science and a Medical Degree from the University of Pittsburgh, did his psychiatry residency at Columbia University, and did a fellowship in Biometrics Research under the direction of his mentor, Dr. Robert Spitzer. He was the Editor of the DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for DSM-IV and the APA's Handbook on Psychiatric Measures. He has co-authored and co-edited a number of books, including A Research Agenda for DSM-V, the DSM-IV-TR Guidebook, the DSM-5 Handbook for Differential Diagnosis, and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5).

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Skills

Experience

Professor of Clinical Psychiatry

Columbia University (CU)

Jan-1990 to Present

Publication

  • dott image May, 2022

Emerging experience with selected new categories in the ICD-11: complex PTSD, prolonged grief disorder, gaming disorder, and compulsive sexual behavio...

Among the important changes in the ICD-11 is the addition of 21 new mental disorders. New categories are typically proposed to: a) improve the usefulness of morbidity statistics; b) facilita...

  • dott image September, 2021

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/absen...

  • dott image February, 2021

An organization- and category-level comparison of diagnostic requirements for mental disorders in ICD-11 and DSM-5

In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the 5th edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In 2019, the World Health Assembly approve...

  • dott image February, 2017

Proposals for Paraphilic Disorders in the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11)

The World Health Organization is currently developing the 11th revision of the International Classifications of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), with approval of the ICD-11 by ...

  • dott image September, 2016

Disorders related to sexuality and gender identity in the ICD-11: revising the ICD-10 classification based on current scientific evidence, best clinic...

In the World Health Organization's forthcoming eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), substantial changes have been proposed ...