title: The suicidal risk in severe personality disorders: differential diagnosis and treatment.
abstract: This article describes the clinical approach to patients with severe personality disorders who present suicidal intention and behavior, developed at the Personality Disorders Institute of the Department of Psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College and the Westchester Division of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. It describes the diagnostic evaluation of patients' suicidal potential, personality disorder, and the presence or absence of a spectrum of regressive illness. The analysis of the combined features in these three symptomatic domains determines alternative strategies of psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological interventions. Within these strategies, transference-focused psychotherapy is described as a specific psychodynamic psychotherapy geared to treat characterologically based suicidal and parasuicidal tendencies in the context of the treatment of the patient's personality disorder.
authors.affiliation: New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Westchester Division, and Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, USA. okernber@med.cornell.edu
authors.forename: O F
authors.initials: OF
authors.lastname: Kernberg
mesh_terms: D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy; D012307:Risk Factors; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013406:Suicide, Attempted / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*