[Personality disorders in a psychiatric unit: retrospective study]

From those patients who were admitted to the psychiatric in-patient unit of the Hospital Ramón y Cajal of Madrid across a period of eight years, those who received a diagnosis of personality disorder according to the axis II of DSM-III or DSM-III-R were selected. We analyzed the patterns of comorbidity between axis I and II, length of the admission, the percentage of readmissions and general variables as age and sex. 17.35% of the patients admitted for the first time and 27.03% of those readmitted received a clinical diagnosis of personality disorder. The most frequent disorders were: unspecified, histrionic, obsessive-compulsive and dependent. In the 93.81% of the patients admitted for the first time, comorbidity with axis I disorders was found. Cluster A personality disorders were most frequently associated to schizophrenia and delusional disorder, cluster B diagnoses with dystimia and alcohol-related problems and cluster C disorders with depression, dystimia and OCD. The cluster A was the one that presented more frequently without axis I comorbidity (14.28%). Cluster B disorders were associated with a shorter length of the admission but, as the unspecified personality disorder, were readmitted more frequently. We discuss the results and compare them with those obtained by other authors.