title: Diagnostic efficiency of borderline personality disorder criteria in hospitalized adolescents: comparison with hospitalized adults.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The authors examined the diagnostic efficiency of borderline personality disorder criteria in adolescent inpatients. For comparison, diagnostic efficiency of borderline personality disorder criteria was also examined in a group of concurrently recruited adult inpatients.
  
  
  METHODS
  Adolescents (N=123) and adults (N=106) were reliably assessed with the Personality Disorder Examination, a semistructured diagnostic interview for DSM-III-R personality disorders. Sixty-five adolescents and 50 adults met diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder. Conditional probabilities were calculated to determine which borderline personality disorder criteria were most efficient as inclusion criteria and as exclusion criteria. Adolescents and adults were analyzed separately, and the results were compared.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were no significant differences between groups with regard to the base rates of the borderline personality disorder diagnosis nor for any borderline personality disorder criterion. The best inclusion criterion for the adolescents was abandonment fears, though for the adults all symptoms were approximately equivalent in this regard. The most efficient exclusion criterion was uncontrolled anger for the adolescents and impulsiveness for the adults.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In hospitalized patients, borderline personality disorder and its symptoms appear to be as frequent for adolescents as for adults. Despite these surface similarities between groups with respect to symptom patterns, several differences were found at the level of the diagnostic efficiency for individual borderline personality disorder criteria. These differences may shed light on the nature of borderline psychopathology during adolescence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: Carlos M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Grilo
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Edell
authors.forename: Thomas H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: McGlashan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D003954:Diagnostic Services / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011336:Probability