Abstract
The Czech Psychiatric Association was the first professional society in the Czech Republic to create clinic practice guidelines for psychiatric care. First adopted in 1998, the guidelines have since been twice revised: in 2005 and 2010.
We have now prepared the fourth revised edition of the document. In its drafting we have drawn upon the three earlier versions and tried to comply with the recommendations of the AGREE Collaboration group that published guidelines for developing standards of care and defined criteria for assesing their quality.
In formulating our guidelines we have followed the principles of evidence-based medicine. We have further harmonized the criteria for assesing the strenght of the evidence and of the recommendations with European and national trends, and have followed the rules set by the National Reference Center (see tables below).