title: Clinically useful screen for borderline personality disorder in psychiatric out-patients.
abstract: A total of 3674 psychiatric out-patients were evaluated with a semi-structured diagnostic interview for DSM-IV borderline personality disorder (BPD). The affective instability criterion had a sensitivity of 92.8%, higher than the sensitivities of the other eight BPD criteria. The negative predictive value of the affective instability criterion was 99%. We recommend that clinicians screen for BPD in the same way that they screen for other psychiatric disorders: by enquiring about a single feature of the disorder (i.e. affective instability), the presence of which identifies most patients with the disorder and the absence of which rules out the disorder.
authors.affiliation: Mark Zimmerman, MD, Matthew D. Multach, BA, Kristy Dalrymple, PhD, Iwona Chelminski, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island, USA mzimmerman@lifespan.org.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zimmerman
authors.affiliation: Mark Zimmerman, MD, Matthew D. Multach, BA, Kristy Dalrymple, PhD, Iwona Chelminski, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Multach
authors.affiliation: Mark Zimmerman, MD, Matthew D. Multach, BA, Kristy Dalrymple, PhD, Iwona Chelminski, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
authors.forename: Kristy
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dalrymple
authors.affiliation: Mark Zimmerman, MD, Matthew D. Multach, BA, Kristy Dalrymple, PhD, Iwona Chelminski, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
authors.forename: Iwona
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Chelminski
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010045:Outpatients; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests