Abstract
Personality Disorders (PDs) are found in up to 10% of adults in the general population, and even higher percentages in psychiatric clinics and hospital settings (Perry and Vaillant, 1989). Individuals with PDs experience moderate to severe impairment in social and/or occupational functioning as well as significant distress much of the time. Research has consistently shown that PDs are also commonly associated with many other psychiatric problems, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, suicide attempts, and completed suicide, substance abuse, etc. (Oldham et al., 1995). These individuals also repeatedly use both in- and out-patients psychiatric services (Perry, Lavori, and Hoke, 1987; Perry, 1993). Despite their suffering, they are widely misunderstood by others. The concept itself of PD has been for a long time unrecognized by psychiatry, so that Hirschfeld (1993) described them as “the stepchildren of psychiatry”. Only in the last decades, PDs have obtained more attention by clinicians and they have gained a more specific diagnostic and therapeutic dimension.
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Perry, J.C., Lingiardi, V., Ianni, F. (1999). Psychodynamic Research can Help us to Improve Diagnosis and Therapy for Personality Disorders. In: Derksen, J., Maffei, C., Groen, H. (eds) Treatment of Personality Disorders. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6876-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6876-3_4
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