[Assessment of personality and personality pathology in older persons]

Compared to other domains in personality research, research on personality and personality pathology in the elderly is still in its infancy. However, with the growing proportion of older people in the population, the interest in this topic has increased sharply in the past years. Nevertheless, our knowledge about this domain remains relatively limited. Researchers in this domain are facing several challenges. On the one hand, little is known about the course of personality and psychopathology in later life, because longitudinal studies are scarce or non-existent. On the other hand, both clinical practice and the research literature indicate a growing demand for reliable and valid instruments for the assessment of personality in the elderly. In this article we discuss the main conceptual and methodological issues, as well as recent evolutions concerning this research domain in the Netherlands and Flanders.