Karen Maré is a research psychiatrist based at the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her work comprises developing and testing diagnostic interviews based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). She is part of the development group of the Flexible Interview for ICD-11 (FLII-11). The FLII-11 assesses mental disorders associated with the greatest global disease burden and is designed to be administered by trained lay interviewers. It has been translated into a variety of languages (Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, German, Georgian, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Liberian English etc) and is currently being used in a number of national mental health surveys and other epidemiological studies in WHO countries.
Dr. Maré is currently completing her PhD project testing the FLII-11’s clinical feasibility in psychiatric hospitals and its feasibility for use in research in South Africa in three observational cohort studies.
Dr Maré’s interests include classification and diagnosis of mental disorders, transcultural psychiatry, evolutionary psychiatry, psychodynamic psychotherapy, the social determinants of mental health and maternal mental health.