Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Simultaneous diagnosis of more than one personality disorder (PD) has been termed ‘comorbidity’ or ‘co-occurrence’ implying that single diagnoses are the norm and multiple diagnoses interesting exceptions. Surveys of PD subjects in fact show 1.5–5.6 diagnoses per subject. Our study explores the hypothesis that multiple PD diagnosis is common and increases with increasingly personality disordered populations.
The PDQ–R questionnaire was administered to three UK samples: referrals for specialist PD in-patient treatment (n = 275); high tariff offenders attending a probation centre (n = 57); and undergraduate students (n = 274).
Means of 6.0 (95% CI 5.7–6.3), 4.0 (3. 1–5.0) and 3.4 (3.0–3.8) PDQ–R diagnoses per subject were found respectively. High rates of PD diagnosis in individual subjects suggest that multiple diagnosis is the norm rather than the exception.
Multiple diagnosis of PD is better construed as ‘breadth’ of psychopathology rather than comorbidity and is a function of sampling frame. High rates of multiple diagnoses question the interpretation of studies of any single PD. The graded construct of ‘breadth’ of axis–II pathology may further our understanding of PD.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
eLetters
No eLetters have been published for this article.