Bo Sayyad Bach

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I am a scientist-practitioner in Mental Health Services based in Region Zealand, Denmark, and the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. My main interests are assessment, conceptualization, classification, and treament of personality dysfunction and psychopathology in general. I have recently been engaged with research on and clinical guidelines for the new ICD-11 framework of personality difficilities as well as the DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD). Within these novel frameworks, all humans share aspects of personality functioning and dysfunction, while the most severe levels of dysfunction are referred to as personality disorder. Against this background, I served as contributor to the WHO Work Group for the ICD-11 Classification of Personality Disorders and Related Traits, and co-authored the field trials for this new diagnostic framework.

The scientific and innovative work on personality and psychopathology is being carried out at our Center for Personality Disorder Research (CPDR), Mental Health Services, Region Zealand.

More broadly, I am also an academic member of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) consortium, which seeks to introduce empirically sound building blocks of mental health issues. The HITOP may be considered a new scientifically informated map of mental health, which might be useful for understanding and treatment of mental disorders in the future.

Rooted in my own clinical work and experience, I have a special interest in the challenging overlap and confusion among pervasive and persistent conditions such as Personality Disorder, Complex PTSD, and Autism Spectrum Disorder, including the clinical value of distinguishing between neurodiversity and personality-related diversity.

I am also an internationally certified trainer og supervisor in schema therapy, which in my experience is an excellent approach to address personality dysfunction and complex emotional needs across a range of mental health diagnoses, integrating psychodynamic, cognitive, and experiential psychotherapy traditions.

In my role as clinical professor, I am particularly involved in the implentation of an academic training program for graduate students in clinical psychology via a collaboration between Region Zealand and the University of Copenhagen. 

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