A Systematic Review on the Reliability and Validity of Semistructured Diagnostic Interviews for Borderline Personality Disorder

There are many semistructured diagnostic interviews to assess borderline personality disorder (BPD), although the reliability and validity of these instruments has not been comprehensively reviewed. In this systematic literature review, Medline and PsycINFO databases were searched for studies evaluating the reliability and validity of diagnostic interviews used to assess BPD. Following a screening of search results and a review by independent raters, 53 studies were included in the review. Instruments were evaluated based on their reliability (interrater, test–retest, and internal consistency) and validity (convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related). Whereas many interviews have been extensively studied and received substantial support for their reliability and certain aspects of validity, some instruments were infrequently investigated and comparatively less data were available on their reliability and validity. Regardless of the diagnostic interview, dimensional assessments were consistently more reliable than categorical diagnoses of BPD. Overall, there was reasonably strong support for the reliability of semistructured diagnostic interviews for BPD, although continued work is needed to establish the validity of these instruments.