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Defining the personality disorders: description of an Australian database
G Parker1, D Hadzi-Pavlovic, K Wilhelm
1School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Objective:
We seek to improve the definition and classification of the personality disorders (PDs) and derive a large database for addressing this objective.
Method:
The paper describes the rationale for the development of a large set of descriptors of the PDs (including all DSM-IV and ICD-10 descriptors, but enriched by an additional 109 items), the design of parallel self-report (SR) and corroborative witness (CW) measures, sample recruitment (of 863 patients with a priori evidence of personality disorder or disturbance) and preliminary descriptive data.
Results:
Analyses (particularly those comparing ratings on molar PD descriptions with putative PD dimensions) argue for acceptable reliability of the data set, while both the size of the sample and the representation of all PD dimensions of interest argue for the adequacy of the database.
Conclusions:
We consider in some detail current limitations to the definition and classification of the PDs, and foreshadow the analytic techniques that will be used to address the key objectives of allowing the PDs to be modelled more clearly and, ideally, measured with greater precision and validity.