title: Challenges in assessing personality of individuals with Gender Dysphoria with the SWAP-200.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Personality assessment can be useful to better understand the complexity of transgender and transsexual people. In particular, the Shedler Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200) is a measure that provides an accurate dimensional evaluation of personality. When assessing gender non-conforming people, however, clinicians can encounter some difficulties in giving appropriate ratings to all the items.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  A brief guide to the use of SWAP-200 with transgender patients is provided, taking into account three areas of psychological functioning: identity, relationships and sexuality. The authors review, one by one, the SWAP-200 items related to these areas, and, relying on their clinical experience and on scientific literature on Gender Dysphoria, they propose recommendations for making personality diagnoses meaningful.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This paper facilitates a better clinical understanding of transgender people, and help clinicians to be more knowledgeable in the assessment of this heterogeneous population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dynamic and Clinic Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy. vittorio.lingiardi@uniroma1.it.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lingiardi
authors.affiliation: Department of Dynamic and Clinic Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Giovanardi
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D000068116:Gender Dysphoria / Q000150:complications*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D011594:Psychometrics
keywords: Gender Dysphoria; Personality; SWAP-200; Transsexualism