Over the past 3 decades, the development of reliable and cross-culturally applicable diagnostic criteria and instruments for the assessment of mental disorders has been one of the major goals of the WHO mental health programme. The most important step in this endeavour of WHO was the production of the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders and the following instruments: Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN) and International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE). This article outlines the basic characteristics of the latest editions of CIDI, SCAN and IPDE and provides descriptions of their newly developed versions and modules.