Alcoholism and personality disorders: an exploratory study.

AIMS To define the most frequent personality disorders related to alcohol dependence. METHODS Using the International Personality Disorder Examination and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II for personality disorders, 30 consecutively recruited alcohol-dependent patients attending an outpatient clinic were compared with 30 consecutively recruited psychiatric patients with non-addictive disorders and 31 subjects from the general population chosen to match the patient samples for age, gender and socio-economic level. RESULTS Forty percent of the alcohol-dependent patients and 16.6% of the general clinical sample (vs 6.4% of the normative sample) showed at least one personality disorder. Dependent personality disorders were most prevalent (13.3%), followed by paranoid and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders (10% each).