The Establishment of a Clinic for Personality Modulation in Iran: A Novel Approach in Personality Psychiatry with a Dimensional Approach

Mental health and treatment approaches have indeed garnered attention in health care. Treatment approaches have shifted from severe and chronic disorders prevalent in the past to milder disorders. Further, these approaches aid in improving performance, health, happiness, and superiority.1 To this end, new diagnostic systems have been introduced to move away from traditional approaches (i.e., stratified diagnosis and treatment) to a dimensional approach. This shift in attitude may affect major current mental health practices requiring innovative approaches, guidelines, and care to revolutionize mental health. Thus, setting up the clinic of personality modulation was inevitable as it provides educational-therapeutic services in accordance with the most up-to-date diagnostic classification system. It can also promote the growth of mental health. Even healthy people or those who pay attention to their mental growth and development can also benefit from the clinic's services. In a dimensional approach, services are provided for those who fall in the category of difficult code of personality in the new psychiatric divisions of the ICD-11. These services will lead to their personal and professional development.
To compensate for the shortcomings of previous classification systems, the ICD-11 has adopted a dimensional approach, a new approach to the classification of personality disorders, in which the focus is primarily on diagnosing and determining the severity of the disease. Moreover, the range of symptoms includes five ranges of traits related to personality disorders. These five domains encompass Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, Disinhibition, and Anankastia .2,3 Thierry, Crawford, Mulder, Bleschfeld, Farnam, et al.,4 establishing this dimensional classification, proposed a new diagnosis called personality difficulty. Diagnosis of the personality difficulty is not a psychological disorder in itself. However, it can still be used for the clinical benefit of virtually normal individuals and has been included in the Z-scores of the ICD-11 for Non-Patients. This diagnosis consists of people who are neither typically ill nor have a personality disorder. Rather, these people have problems with life management that causes medical problems and incurs costs for the community and treatment systems.5 The researchers concluded that the proposed changes could aid clinical efficacy in diagnosing the personality disorder and selecting appropriate treatment. In this way, the misconceptions concerning the false label attached to the disorder term can be dispelled.4
Therefore, current psychiatry is moving in a direction with a program not only for patients but also for almost normal people who have problems in their lives or feel that there are some difficulties in developing their personality. One style of psychiatric treatment called cosmetic psychiatry6 or positive psychiatry7 has attracted attention among the whole range of psychiatric disciplines. Cosmetic Psychiatry refers to the empowerment and strengthening of people's cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processes who do not suffer from a specific disorder. In other words, the treatment is to improve a person's mental state in the absence of any clinical disorder.8 The development of the ICD-11 has led to innovative approaches which were not available before. The reason for the clinic's foundation lies in the philosophical theories presented by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Sadr al-Muta'allehin Shirazi. They saw soul and psyche as a constantly evolving category. According to their theories, the soul is inherently growing and ascending unless a factor disrupts this process.