title: Personality disorders: illegitimate subject positions.
abstract: The diagnosis of personality disorder is common in mental health nurse settings and is a term often used without critical consideration. In clinical practice, the term personality disorder has pejorative connotations, which arise out of the way in which these behaviours are constructed as behavioural rather than psychiatric. The discursive construction of categories of personality disorder are inculcated into clinical practice and become taken-for-granted by those in practice culture. The construction of some personalities as disordered and, therefore, illegitimate becomes natural. This paper provides a critical analysis of the diagnosis and suggests an approach to mental health nursing care that is more legitimizing for those people who receive psychiatric diagnoses.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies and Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand. marie.crowe@otago.ac.nz
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Crowe
mesh_terms: D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D006801:Humans; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000451:nursing* / Q000523:psychology; D011582:Psychological Theory