Personality Disorders

Abstract

As personality disorders represent the largest group of psychiatric diagnoses in the general population and they can be diagnosed in about 40 to 60 percent of psychiatric patients, they receive broad attention in the practice and research of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and behavioral medicine. The term ‘personality disorder’ has a long history. It developed out of the concept of psychopathy that resulted from a confluence of views entertained in the French, German, and Anglo-American psychiatric traditions. Well into the twentieth century, sociocultural factors caused these conceptions of psychopathy to develop more or less independently. Modern classification systems such as ICD-10 and DSM-IV prefer a descriptive and behavior-oriented definition of personality disorders, which increases reliability but risks a reductionistic and purely criteriological assessment of personality. Starting from the diagnostic categories of ICD-10 and DSM-IV this article informs about the general definition of the concept and the diagnosis of the specific personality disorders. Furthermore it deals with current research on epidemiological, etiological, and therapeutic aspects. In the context of etiology, genetic and psychobiological links from the domains of normal personality and mental disorders, classified on Axis I, are reviewed. Finally future directions of theory and research are discussed.