Preface
Address to the reader
Dear colleague — physician, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, resident, student.
This book grew out of an absence. I have been seeing patients for twenty-three years, and for most of that time I ran into the same wall: the diagnosis was clear — but the criteria that confirm it sat in one source, the order of investigation in another, the treatment algorithm in a third, and the prognosis nowhere at all. That road had to be walked again for every patient.
Searching made it heavier, not lighter. On the first page of results an obsolete classification, a pharmaceutical brochure and somebody's evidence-free “method” stand side by side. Telling which one has a study behind it and which has only marketing takes hours you do not have: the patient is sitting opposite you and expects an answer now. Teaching residents made this plainer still — a wrong decision usually comes not from ignorance but from trusting the first source that appears.
I looked for a ready solution for a long time. I did not find one, so I had to write it. Everything in this book follows from a single principle: one disorder, one page. Criteria, differential diagnosis, investigation, treatment, prognosis and the most persistent myths together, with the codes of three classifications and a named source behind every claim. Only what can be verified goes in; the rest is called by its name in a section of its own.
What you have in front of you is “Clinical Psychiatry: Standards of Diagnosis and Therapy”, the first systematic clinical psychiatry reference in the Azerbaijani language. It was not written to be read through; it was written to be used. The patient is sitting opposite you and you have ten minutes. Every chapter is built the same way — eleven sections in a fixed order — so that you never have to hunt for what you need.
The book is built on ICD-11. When that classification came into force in 2022 it changed more than the codes: it rewrote how we look at personality disorder, what we mean by trauma, and the old boundary between the organic and the functional. At the same time I have not abandoned the post-Soviet clinical school — the tradition of Popov and Vid. Where the international guideline is stronger, the guideline is cited; where the classical school sees more clearly, that is said as well. Disagreements are not smoothed over; they are named.
Two of the protocols here are my own — the treatment of nocturnal enuresis in children and a two-stage strategy for psychogenic depression. They are modifications of international guidelines, and their level of evidence is IV: expert clinical experience, not a randomised trial. I say so plainly, so that the reader knows what they are relying on. Test them, argue with them, try them in your own practice.
One request: do not take this book as the last word. Psychiatry moves quickly and this text is a living one. If you find a mistake, write to me. The next edition will be the better for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of this book is Kenan Rahimov, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with 23 years of clinical experience (since 2003). He graduated from Azerbaijan State Medical University in 2001 and completed his internship the same year at Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No. 2 in Baku. From 2001 to 2003 in Saint Petersburg, at the V. M. Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, he completed his clinical residency with honours: in the department of psychotherapy for neuroses under Professor B. D. Karvasarsky, Chief Psychotherapist of the Russian Federation and an internationally recognised specialist, and in the department of psychotherapy for psychoses under Professor V. D. Vid, one of the first psychoanalysts in the post-Soviet region certified by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Over 23 years of practice he has treated more than 1,000 patients with depressive disorders and more than 1,000 children with nocturnal enuresis; in 2025 alone his clinical team successfully treated more than 250 children. Since 2020 he has been the founder of the RAGIMOFF Professional School of Psychology; since 2021, the authorised representative in Azerbaijan of the Karvasarsky Institute in St Petersburg and head of its continuing professional education programme in clinical psychology; and since 2022, an ambassador of the International Psychotherapy Association (IPAS). The two clinical protocols of his own presented in this book — the treatment of nocturnal enuresis in children and a two-stage strategy for treating psychogenic depression — represent modifications of international evidence-based guidelines (NICE, APA, WFSBP) grounded in the author's long-term clinical experience and retrospective observations. They aim at higher clinical effectiveness in a shorter time than the standard international protocols; the level of evidence should be regarded as IV (expert clinical experience). The author's recommendations rest on clinical expertise and 23 years of uninterrupted practice; readers are invited to test them, evaluate them and, where necessary, adapt them in their own practice.