ICD-11 Anxiety Classification: Anxiety or Fear-Related Disorders
Updated: Oct 8
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
ICD-11 does not use “anxiety disorders” as a loose umbrella for every condition in which anxiety appears. Its formal grouping is “Anxiety or fear-related disorders,” a diagnostic family that brings together disorders whose core clinical organization is dominated by excessive fear, anxiety, apprehension, or closely related avoidance patterns. The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements (CDDR) is the clinical diagnostic manual for these conditions and is intended for trained mental-health and other qualified health professionals.
For readers searching “ICD-11 anxiety disorders,” the central answer is straightforward: the core ICD-11 grouping includes generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, selective mutism, plus other specified and unspecified anxiety or fear-related disorders. The codes run from 6B00 through 6B06, followed by 6B0Y and 6B0Z. Contemporary reviews of the ICD-11 taxonomy describe the same structure and the major changes from ICD-10. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
This classification is a map of diagnoses, not a self-diagnosis checklist. Fear can be normal. Anxiety can be normal. Worry can be normal. A panic attack can occur without panic disorder. Avoidance can occur without a diagnosable anxiety disorder. A formal diagnosis depends on the pattern, persistence, severity, functional impact, developmental and cultural context, differential diagnosis, and the specific requirements of the disorder being considered.
ICD-11 anxiety disorders: the quick classification
The core ICD-11 “Anxiety or fear-related disorders” grouping is organized as follows:
• 6B00 — Generalized anxiety disorder
• 6B01 — Panic disorder
• 6B02 — Agoraphobia
• 6B03 — Specific phobia
• 6B04 — Social anxiety disorder
• 6B05 — Separation anxiety disorder
• 6B06 — Selective mutism
• 6B0Y — Other specified anxiety or fear-related disorder
• 6B0Z — Anxiety or fear-related disorder, unspecified
The code list is clinically useful, but the structure matters as much as the codes. ICD-11 reorganized anxiety and fear conditions around a more coherent lifespan framework, separated several neighboring diagnostic families that had once shared a broad ICD-10 “neurotic, stress-related and somatoform” territory, clarified the relationship between panic disorder and agoraphobia, and created a way to record panic attacks outside panic disorder. These changes were part of a broader attempt to improve clinical utility and global applicability. Kogan et al., 2016.
What “Anxiety or fear-related disorders” means in ICD-11
ICD-11’s wording is deliberate. Anxiety and fear overlap, but they are not interchangeable experiences. Fear is typically oriented toward an immediate or identifiable threat. Anxiety often involves anticipation, apprehension, uncertainty, or expected future threat. In real clinical presentations the two can blend, and ICD-11 does not require a person’s subjective experience to fit a simple textbook distinction.
A key organizing idea in the ICD-11 development literature is the “focus of apprehension”: the stimulus, situation, outcome, or domain around which fear or anxiety is organized. Kogan and colleagues described this as one way the disorders can be differentiated. A specific phobia may have a highly circumscribed focus, while social anxiety disorder is organized around social situations and feared negative evaluation. Agoraphobia centers on situations in which escape or access to help may be difficult if disabling symptoms occur. Separation anxiety disorder centers on separation from important attachment figures. Generalized anxiety disorder is broader, with excessive apprehension across multiple areas of life.
This idea helps explain why ICD-11 does not classify diagnoses merely according to how “anxious” someone feels. Two people can report similar levels of anxiety while having different diagnostic patterns because the triggers, expectations, avoidance, course, associated behaviors, and functional consequences differ.
Classification is not the same as symptom coding
ICD-11 distinguishes a disorder from an isolated symptom or clinical finding. Contemporary summaries of the classification note that panic attacks can be recorded separately when they occur outside panic disorder, and that anxiety, fear, and worry can also be represented as symptoms rather than automatically being treated as disorders. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. This distinction is clinically important: having a panic attack does not by itself establish panic disorder, and feeling anxious does not by itself establish an anxiety or fear-related disorder.
Classification is not the same as screening
An ICD-11 diagnosis is not created by a questionnaire score. Screening scales and symptom-severity measures can help identify people who may benefit from further assessment or help clinicians monitor symptoms, but a score does not determine the diagnostic category by itself. ICD-11 diagnosis requires clinical assessment using the relevant diagnostic requirements and differential considerations. The WHO CDDR is explicitly designed as clinical diagnostic guidance rather than a consumer test.
The ICD-11 anxiety or fear-related disorders, one by one
6B00 — Generalized anxiety disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, is the first named disorder in the grouping. Its central pattern is persistent, excessive apprehension or worry that is not confined to one narrowly defined object or situation. The concerns may involve family, health, finances, school, work, or other domains of ordinary life. The diagnostic issue is not whether a person has realistic things to worry about; nearly everyone does. The clinical question is whether worry and anxiety have become persistent, difficult to regulate, accompanied by relevant symptoms, and sufficiently impairing or distressing to meet the disorder’s requirements.
ICD-11 simplified aspects of the older ICD-10 formulation. A recent taxonomy review notes that ICD-11 no longer depends on the same precise minimum symptom count that appeared in ICD-10 and does not rigidly preserve the old six-month cutoff in the same way. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. This reflects a broader ICD-11 preference for essential clinical features and professional judgment over artificial precision when a universal numerical cutoff is not well supported.
GAD remains its own diagnostic territory. Persistent worry occurring inside another disorder does not automatically become GAD, and ordinary stress about a difficult period is not equivalent to GAD. Assessment asks how broad and persistent the worry is, what other symptoms accompany it, how it affects functioning, and whether another mental or medical condition better explains the presentation.
6B01 — Panic disorder
Panic disorder is defined around recurrent unexpected panic attacks and the ongoing consequences of those attacks. The diagnosis is not simply “having panic.” A panic attack is an episode of intense fear or discomfort with a cluster of physical and cognitive symptoms; panic disorder requires the larger pattern specified by the diagnostic system, including persistent concern about additional attacks or their consequences and/or behavior aimed at preventing recurrence.
ICD-11 also separates the concept of a panic attack from the diagnosis of panic disorder. An isolated or situational panic attack can occur in other anxiety disorders, other mental disorders, medical contexts, or in someone who never develops panic disorder. The ICD-11 framework therefore allows panic attacks to be recorded outside a panic-disorder diagnosis. Kogan et al., 2016 identified this qualifier as an important structural feature, and later taxonomy reviews describe the separate panic-attack code MB23.H.
This distinction matters for safety as well as classification. Chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, fainting, neurologic symptoms, or other acute physical symptoms cannot be safely attributed to anxiety solely because they resemble panic symptoms. When symptoms are new, severe, atypical, or medically concerning, appropriate medical assessment takes priority over online classification.
6B02 — Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia is a separate ICD-11 diagnosis rather than a subtype of panic disorder. The central fear concerns situations in which escape may be difficult or help may not be available if incapacitating, embarrassing, or panic-like symptoms occur. Commonly feared contexts can include public transportation, crowds, open or enclosed spaces, being far from home, or being outside alone, but diagnosis depends on the overall pattern rather than a casual checklist of places.
One major change from ICD-10 is the clearer independence of panic disorder and agoraphobia. ICD-11 allows them to be diagnosed separately and, when both sets of requirements are met, comorbidly. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. This avoids treating agoraphobia as merely a consequence or modifier of panic disorder.
6B03 — Specific phobia
Specific phobia involves marked fear or anxiety focused on a particular object or situation, with avoidance or endurance under intense fear and a reaction that is disproportionate to the actual danger when cultural and environmental context are considered. The category can encompass fears involving animals, natural environments, blood or injury, medical procedures, flying, enclosed spaces, and many other circumscribed triggers.
A named fear is not automatically a separate ICD-11 diagnosis. Popular Greek-derived “phobia” names can describe a topic of fear, but the clinical mapping is generally to specific phobia when the actual diagnostic requirements are met. The existence of an internet label does not create a new ICD-11 disorder. ICD-11 also does not preserve every older subtype as a separate diagnostic category. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
6B04 — Social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder is organized around marked fear or anxiety in social situations where the person may be observed, scrutinized, or negatively evaluated by others. The feared outcome may involve appearing incompetent, embarrassing oneself, displaying visible anxiety symptoms, being rejected, or otherwise being judged negatively.
ICD-11 uses “social anxiety disorder” rather than the older ICD-10 term “social phobia.” The contemporary formulation emphasizes feared negative evaluation and recognizes cultural context. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. Ordinary shyness, introversion, discomfort with public speaking, or preference for small groups does not by itself establish the disorder. The threshold depends on persistence, disproportionality, distress or impairment, and the broader clinical picture.
6B05 — Separation anxiety disorder
Separation anxiety disorder is no longer restricted to childhood in ICD-11. It involves excessive and developmentally inappropriate fear or concern about separation from important attachment figures. In children, this may center on parents or caregivers; in adults, relevant attachment figures may include partners, children, or other close relationships.
The move reflects ICD-11’s lifespan approach. Separation anxiety had previously been embedded in childhood-specific sections of ICD-10, but ICD-11 places it alongside the other anxiety or fear-related disorders and removes the assumption that clinically significant separation anxiety must begin in childhood. WHO’s CDDR overview highlights the lifespan approach as a general innovation in ICD-11 mental-health classification, while Domschke and Zwanzger describe the specific relocation of separation anxiety disorder.
This does not mean that distress about separation is pathological whenever it is intense. Context matters. Grief, displacement, actual danger, relationship instability, developmental stage, caregiving responsibilities, and culturally normative family patterns can all affect separation distress. Diagnosis requires a pattern that meets the disorder’s clinical threshold.
6B06 — Selective mutism
Selective mutism is also included in the ICD-11 anxiety or fear-related disorders grouping and is treated through a lifespan lens. The condition involves a consistent pattern of speaking in some situations while failing to speak in other situations where speech is expected, despite adequate capacity for speech in settings where the person does speak.
ICD-11 changed the older term “elective mutism” to “selective mutism” and removed a childhood-onset requirement. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. The change recognizes that the phenomenon can remain clinically relevant beyond childhood. At the same time, not speaking in a particular setting is not sufficient for diagnosis. Language ability, developmental factors, autism, psychotic disorders, neurologic conditions, hearing or speech disorders, cultural and linguistic context, and other potential explanations may need to be considered.
6B0Y — Other specified anxiety or fear-related disorder
The “other specified” category is used when a presentation clearly belongs within the anxiety or fear-related family and causes clinically significant difficulty, but does not meet the full diagnostic requirements for one of the named disorders, while the clinician can specify why. It is a residual clinical category, not a catch-all invitation to relabel every unexplained anxiety symptom as an anxiety disorder.
The distinction between a specified residual category and a named disorder protects diagnostic clarity. A person whose symptoms fall short of the requirements for panic disorder, for example, is not automatically given panic disorder because the attacks feel severe. The clinician identifies the best-fitting classification based on the actual presentation.
6B0Z — Anxiety or fear-related disorder, unspecified
The unspecified category is available when clinically significant anxiety or fear-related psychopathology is evident but there is insufficient information to assign a more specific category, or when the presentation cannot yet be classified more precisely. “Unspecified” is therefore a formal diagnostic option, not evidence that the clinician believes all anxiety disorders are interchangeable.
The biggest changes from ICD-10 to ICD-11
1. Anxiety and fear-related disorders became their own grouping
In ICD-10, phobic anxiety disorders and other anxiety disorders sat within a much broader chapter that also contained obsessive-compulsive disorder, reactions to severe stress, dissociative disorders, somatoform disorders, and other “neurotic” conditions. ICD-11 reorganized this territory. Anxiety or fear-related disorders now form a distinct grouping, while obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, disorders specifically associated with stress, dissociative disorders, and disorders of bodily distress or bodily experience occupy their own diagnostic families. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
This change is more than terminology. It reduces the historical tendency to treat many clinically different conditions as variations of “anxiety neurosis.” ICD-11 no longer uses neurosis as the organizing category. Anxiety remains a symptom across many disorders, but the presence of anxiety no longer determines diagnostic family membership.
2. ICD-11 adopted a stronger lifespan organization
ICD-11 moved separation anxiety disorder and selective mutism out of childhood-specific groupings and into the same anxiety or fear-related family used across the lifespan. The broader WHO CDDR explicitly describes a lifespan approach as one of ICD-11’s major innovations.
The practical consequence is that clinicians are prompted to consider these disorders in adults as well as children. It also reduces the risk that an adult presentation is dismissed merely because an older classification treated the condition primarily as a childhood disorder.
3. Panic disorder and agoraphobia are diagnostically independent
ICD-10’s relationship between panic disorder and agoraphobia was more entangled. ICD-11 treats panic disorder and agoraphobia as separate disorders that can occur independently or together. The ICD-11 development review specifically described clarification of this relationship as a design goal, and the 2025 taxonomy review confirms the resulting separate diagnoses.
This is clinically useful because the two disorders can have different maintaining processes. A person may have recurrent unexpected panic attacks without broad agoraphobic avoidance, or agoraphobia without meeting criteria for panic disorder. When both are present, both can be recognized.
4. Panic attacks can be recorded outside panic disorder
ICD-11 permits the presence of panic attacks to be coded in other diagnostic contexts rather than forcing them into panic disorder. Contemporary taxonomy summaries identify MB23.H for panic attacks occurring without a co-occurring panic-disorder diagnosis. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
This matters because panic attacks are transdiagnostic phenomena. They can occur in social anxiety disorder, specific phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive disorders, substance-related conditions, and medical contexts. A panic attack tells the clinician something important about the presentation, but it does not answer the diagnostic question by itself.
5. Mixed depressive and anxiety disorder moved outside this grouping
ICD-10 placed mixed anxiety and depressive disorder within the anxiety territory. ICD-11 uses “mixed depressive and anxiety disorder” and places it under depressive disorders rather than under anxiety or fear-related disorders. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025. This is an important boundary for readers who assume that any diagnosis containing the word “anxiety” must belong to the anxiety-disorders group.
6. Substance-induced and medically secondary anxiety are classified elsewhere
Anxiety symptoms can be caused or intensified by substances, medications, withdrawal, endocrine conditions, cardiovascular conditions, respiratory illness, neurologic disease, and many other medical factors. ICD-11 does not solve this by placing every such presentation inside 6B00–6B0Z. Substance-induced anxiety disorders are organized under disorders due to substance use or addictive behaviors, and secondary anxiety syndromes associated with diseases classified elsewhere have their own location. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
This is one reason differential diagnosis matters. An online description of anxiety cannot establish whether symptoms reflect a primary anxiety disorder, another psychiatric condition, substance effects, medication effects, a medical condition, or more than one factor at the same time.
What is not classified as an ICD-11 anxiety or fear-related disorder
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
OCD can involve intense anxiety, fear, doubt, avoidance, and reassurance seeking, but ICD-11 does not classify OCD under “Anxiety or fear-related disorders.” It belongs to “Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.” The distinction is explained in the English Hub article Is OCD an Anxiety Disorder? Current Classification Explained. Anxiety can be clinically central to OCD without determining its formal diagnostic family.
Post-traumatic stress disorder and other stress-related disorders
PTSD is not an ICD-11 anxiety or fear-related disorder. It belongs to the separate grouping “Disorders specifically associated with stress.” Fear and anxiety are common in trauma-related presentations, but the diagnosis is organized around exposure to qualifying stressors or traumatic events and the specific syndrome that follows, not simply around anxiety intensity.
Hypochondriasis / health anxiety disorder
Health anxiety is another important boundary. In ICD-11, hypochondriasis (health anxiety disorder) is primarily classified within obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, although ICD-11’s polyhierarchical structure can create secondary-parent relationships that make a condition visible from more than one conceptual route. It should not be turned into a core 6B00–6B0Z anxiety disorder merely because anxiety about health is prominent.
Mixed depressive and anxiety disorder
As noted above, ICD-11 places mixed depressive and anxiety disorder with depressive disorders. The wording of a diagnosis is therefore not enough to infer its classification chapter.
Normal fear, worry, stress, and situational anxiety
Normal fear and anxiety are not diagnoses. Fear before a dangerous event, worry about a serious financial problem, heightened arousal during an emergency, grief-related anxiety after a loss, or temporary stress during major change may be intense without constituting an anxiety disorder. The diagnostic boundary depends on the nature, duration, disproportionality, persistence, impairment, and context of the pattern.
Normal anxiety, symptoms, panic attacks, and clinical disorders are different levels
The same word can describe very different levels of a psychological phenomenon. “Anxiety” may refer to an ordinary emotion, a transient stress response, a symptom within another condition, a trait tendency, a screening result, or part of a clinical disorder. “Fear” can be adaptive and proportionate to danger or can become part of a persistent disorder. “Worry” can be realistic problem-solving or a difficult-to-control component of GAD. “Avoidance” can be sensible risk management or a maintaining behavior in a fear-related disorder.
The ICD-11 classification does not erase these distinctions. In fact, the field study conducted during ICD-11 development found that clinicians could apply the new anxiety and fear-related guidelines with diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility that were equivalent or superior to ICD-10 overall, but the study also identified difficulty around the boundary between disorder and normality in subthreshold anxiety cases. Rebello et al., 2019. That finding is a useful reminder that diagnostic thresholds require judgment even within a formal classification system.
A screening result sits at another level. A high score can indicate substantial symptoms or the need for assessment; it is not a formal ICD-11 diagnosis. Conversely, a person can have clinically important symptoms even when one questionnaire does not capture their presentation well. Diagnosis integrates symptom form, course, context, impairment, exclusions, comorbidity, and clinical judgment.
Why the ICD-11 classification was designed this way
ICD-11 was built as an international health-classification system rather than as a list of internet definitions. WHO describes the CDDR as a comprehensive manual intended to support accurate and reliable clinical identification of mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental disorders around the world. It was developed through evidence review, multidisciplinary participation, and extensive international field testing. World Health Organization, 2024.
The anxiety and fear-related disorders working group emphasized clinical utility, global applicability, essential features, and a more coherent organization across the lifespan. Kogan et al., 2016 described the proposed grouping before ICD-11 was finalized. The subsequent global case-controlled field study included 1,840 mental-health professionals using six languages. Clinicians applying ICD-11 guidance were significantly more accurate than those using ICD-10 for generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and adult separation anxiety disorder in the study vignettes, while overall diagnostic accuracy and clinical-utility ratings were equivalent or superior. Rebello et al., 2019.
The evidence should be interpreted at the right level. A vignette-based field study supports the usability and diagnostic performance of the classification guidelines under study conditions; it does not prove that every real-world diagnosis will be simple, that diagnostic disagreement has disappeared, or that the classification is the final word on the biology of anxiety. Classification systems are clinical tools built from evidence, expert synthesis, field testing, and practical requirements. They can be revised as evidence and health-system needs evolve.
How ICD-11 handles diagnostic precision without turning diagnosis into a checklist
One of the notable ICD-11 changes is reduced dependence on rigid symptom counts for several anxiety disorders. The 2025 comparison of ICD-10 and ICD-11 notes that exact minimum numbers of symptoms were removed from several categories and that some duration requirements became less mechanically fixed. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
This does not mean that “anything counts.” ICD-11 uses essential clinical features, characteristic patterns, persistence, contextual proportionality, impairment or distress, and disorder-specific boundaries. It also provides guidance on developmental presentations, cultural factors, differential diagnosis, and the boundary with normality. The purpose is to improve clinical validity and utility without pretending that a single numerical threshold can capture every presentation in every culture and age group.
For readers accustomed to self-tests, this can feel less concrete than a checklist. Clinically, however, the flexibility is intentional. A professional assessment asks not only how many symptoms are present but what they mean together, how long they have persisted, what situations trigger them, what the person does in response, whether functioning is impaired, and whether another diagnosis or medical explanation is more appropriate.
ICD-11 CDDR and ICD-11 MMS: why two WHO resources exist
WHO distinguishes the Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements from the Mortality and Morbidity Statistics linearization. The CDDR is the clinical diagnostic manual used to understand and assign mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental diagnoses. The MMS supports standardized statistical coding and reporting across health systems. They belong to the same ICD-11 architecture but serve different practical functions.
This distinction explains why clinicians may consult detailed diagnostic descriptions while coders and health-information systems also rely on structured code sets. A web page that shows only a code is therefore incomplete as a clinical explanation. Conversely, a long symptom description that ignores the formal code and classification family is incomplete as a classification guide.
ICD-11 versus DSM-5-TR: a brief orientation
ICD-11 and DSM-5-TR overlap substantially in how they organize many anxiety disorders, but they are separate classification systems produced by different organizations and used in different institutional contexts. ICD-11 is the World Health Organization’s global disease-classification system. DSM-5-TR is published by the American Psychiatric Association.
At a high level, both systems separate OCD and trauma-related disorders from the anxiety-disorders chapter, recognize separation anxiety disorder beyond childhood, and treat panic disorder and agoraphobia as distinct diagnoses. ICD-11 also drew deliberately on the effort to improve harmonization with DSM-5 where clinically useful. Kogan et al., 2016. The systems nevertheless differ in wording, thresholds, coding architecture, residual categories, and some diagnostic details.
This article owns the ICD-11 classification intent. A full DSM-5-TR classification and a detailed DSM-5-TR-versus-ICD-11 comparison are separate topics because combining all three intents on one page would blur the diagnostic architecture and make the page less useful.
How to read an ICD-11 anxiety code without overinterpreting it
A code identifies a diagnostic category within a classification system. It does not tell you the cause of a person’s symptoms, their severity, their treatment plan, their prognosis, or whether the diagnosis was assigned correctly. Two people with the same code can have different triggers, comorbidities, histories, functional impairments, strengths, treatment preferences, and medical contexts.
The code also does not imply a hierarchy of seriousness. A specific phobia can be mild and circumscribed or profoundly disabling. GAD can vary in severity. Panic disorder can range from intermittent attacks with limited disruption to extensive anticipatory anxiety and avoidance. Selective mutism may affect specific settings while leaving speech intact elsewhere. Classification names the syndrome; assessment characterizes the individual presentation.
If an ICD-11 code appears in a medical record and its meaning is unclear, the most useful question is not simply “What does this code mean?” but “What clinical pattern led to this diagnosis, what alternatives were considered, and what does it imply for care?” A qualified clinician who assessed the person can explain the reasoning in context.
Frequently asked questions
What are the ICD-11 anxiety disorders?
The core ICD-11 “Anxiety or fear-related disorders” are generalized anxiety disorder (6B00), panic disorder (6B01), agoraphobia (6B02), specific phobia (6B03), social anxiety disorder (6B04), separation anxiety disorder (6B05), selective mutism (6B06), other specified anxiety or fear-related disorder (6B0Y), and anxiety or fear-related disorder, unspecified (6B0Z). Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
How many anxiety disorders are in ICD-11?
There are six named core disorders from 6B00 through 6B06 if the residual “other specified” and “unspecified” categories are excluded from the count. Including those two residual categories produces eight category entries in the core 6B0x grouping. Counting can therefore differ depending on whether someone is asking for named disorders or every billable/classifiable category listed under the grouping.
Is a panic attack an ICD-11 anxiety disorder?
No. A panic attack is a clinical phenomenon that can occur in panic disorder and in other conditions. ICD-11 provides a way to record panic attacks without diagnosing panic disorder. Panic disorder is a separate diagnosis with its own pattern and requirements. Kogan et al., 2016; Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
Is “anxiety attack” an ICD-11 diagnosis?
No. “Anxiety attack” is a common informal expression, but it is not the name of a distinct ICD-11 diagnosis. People may use the phrase for panic attacks, intense anxiety, escalating worry, acute stress, or other experiences. Clinically, the underlying phenomenon has to be described rather than inferred from the informal label.
Is OCD an anxiety disorder in ICD-11?
No. OCD is classified under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, not under the core ICD-11 anxiety or fear-related disorders. Anxiety can be a major feature of OCD and anxiety disorders can co-occur with OCD. See Is OCD an Anxiety Disorder? Current Classification Explained for the classification boundary.
Is PTSD an anxiety disorder in ICD-11?
No. PTSD is classified under disorders specifically associated with stress. Fear and anxiety may be prominent symptoms, but the diagnostic family is different.
Is health anxiety an ICD-11 anxiety disorder?
Not as a core 6B00–6B0Z category. Hypochondriasis, also called health anxiety disorder in ICD-11 terminology, is primarily placed within obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, although ICD-11 can use secondary parentage to reflect clinically meaningful relationships across the classification.
Can adults have separation anxiety disorder in ICD-11?
Yes. ICD-11 uses a lifespan approach and does not restrict separation anxiety disorder to childhood. Adult presentations can be diagnosed when the clinical requirements are met. World Health Organization, 2024; Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
Can selective mutism occur in adults in ICD-11?
Yes. ICD-11 removed the childhood-onset restriction found in older classification approaches. Adult selective mutism is uncommon and requires careful differential assessment, but age alone does not exclude the diagnosis. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
Is mixed anxiety and depression an anxiety disorder in ICD-11?
ICD-11 places mixed depressive and anxiety disorder under depressive disorders rather than under anxiety or fear-related disorders. Domschke and Zwanzger, 2025.
Does a high anxiety questionnaire score prove an ICD-11 diagnosis?
No. A questionnaire can screen for symptoms or quantify severity, depending on the instrument. A formal ICD-11 diagnosis requires clinical assessment of the relevant diagnostic requirements, functional impact, course, context, differential diagnosis, and other clinically important information.
Can I use the ICD-11 code list to diagnose myself?
The code list can help you understand classification, but it cannot establish an individual diagnosis. The WHO CDDR is designed for clinical use by trained professionals. If anxiety, fear, panic, avoidance, or mutism is persistent, severe, or interfering with daily life, a qualified mental-health or medical professional can assess the pattern and relevant differentials.
The bottom line
ICD-11 organizes its core anxiety diagnoses under the formal heading “Anxiety or fear-related disorders.” The group contains generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, selective mutism, and specified or unspecified residual categories. The modern structure is broader across the lifespan and more diagnostically differentiated than ICD-10.
The most important conceptual boundary is that anxiety is a psychological phenomenon, while an anxiety or fear-related disorder is a specific clinical diagnosis. Panic attacks, worry, fear, avoidance, stress responses, questionnaire scores, and anxiety occurring inside OCD, PTSD, depression, substance-related conditions, or medical illness do not automatically become one of the ICD-11 6B00–6B0Z disorders.
For classification questions, the strongest reference point is the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 CDDR, supplemented by the peer-reviewed ICD-11 development literature and field studies. The classification is designed to support professional diagnosis, clinical communication, and health-system coding while preserving distinctions that a symptom-only view of “anxiety” can easily erase.
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