The clinical utility of the Five Factor Model of personality disorder

Previous research has suggested that clinicians would be unable to recover DSM-IV-TR personality disorder diagnoses on the basis of information provided by the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality disorder. However, the prior research did not provide all of the information that would be available to a clinician when determining a personality disorder diagnosis; more specifically, the maladaptive personality traits associated with each FFM trait elevation. In the current study, 201 clinicians provided DSM-IV-TR personality disorder diagnoses on the basis of either the DSM-IV-TR criterion sets or the respective FFM maladaptive personality traits. Accuracy using the FFM maladaptive traits was much improved over the prior research and comparable to the accuracy obtained with the criterion sets. The clinicians also rated the FFM and the DSM-IV-TR as comparably useful for obtaining a DSM-IV-TR personality disorder diagnosis.