Phemenological aspects of personality disorders in adult psychiatric patients.

BACKGROUND Many empirical studies give evidence of co-occurrence of mental and personality disorders (PDs). On the other hand theoretical models explain the relationship between personality and mental disorders from different perspectives. This research studied the phemenological aspects of PDs in adult psychiatric patients with different mental disorders according to cognitive and psychoanalytic criteria for personality pathology. SUBJECTS AND METHODS In order to study personality pathology in different diagnostic groups we constructed a self-report Questionnaire of Personality Disorders (VMO-2) on the basis of the DSM-IV-TR classification of PD (APA 2000), Beck's theory of dysfunctional beliefs (Beck et al. 2004) and psychoanalytic theories of personality (Kernberg 1986). The content of items in VMO-2 reflected the phenomenology of PDs and is focused on the basic experience of self and others in specific personality types. The questionnaire consists of 193 items which are divided into 11 clinical scales (Histrionic, Obsessive-compulsive, Avoidant, Dependent, Depressive, Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, Paranoid, Schizoid and Schizotypal PD scale) and a validity (Lie) scale. The sample of 642 adult patients with different mental disorders and 477 healthy controls of both genders served as subjects in the study. RESULTS All groups of patients reached higher scores on VMO-2 and revealed more personality pathology as compared to the control group. There were differences in specific personality scales between patients of different diagnostic groups. The schizotypal PD scale discriminated significantly between patients with schizophrenia and the majority of other diagnostic groups. The group of patients with opioid dependence disorder reached the highest mean score on the scale for antisocial PD. CONCLUSION Our results on VMO-2 show partial support for psychodynamic and cognitive theories of personality pathology. Results are also in accordance with other empirical studies which show that some characteristics of PDs relate to specific mental disorders. We discuss methodological problems regarding some uncontrolled factors which could influence the results of our study. Despite some limitations the present study confirms the relationship between the phenomenological aspect of personality pathology and mental disorders.