title: Diagnosing personality disorders. A review of issues and research methods.
abstract: Many questions face researchers conducting personality disorder research. Which measure should be used? When should patients be evaluated--at initial presentation when they are still symptomatic, or after symptom resolution? Can a patient accurately describe his or her personality, or must an informant be contacted? What do you do when personality traits change during an individual's lifetime? I discuss these and other issues of personality disorder assessment in the DSM-III/DSM-III-R era, and examine the empiric literature bearing on these questions. First, I review studies of diagnostic reliability and stability, because studies of the above questions can only be interpreted in the context of the limitations imposed by modest reliability.
authors.affiliation: Medical College of Pennsylvania, Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Philadelphia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zimmerman
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards; D009626:Terminology as Topic