Volume 7 Issue 3 March, 2017
❌ Personality disorders are very rare.
✅ Personality disorders with strict criteria applied as per classificatory systems are difficult to diagnose but in routine clinical practice, personality disorders are much more common than it is estimated and mixed traits are most common than pure forms of named disorders.
❌ Personality disorders are found only in mentally ill.
✅ This is a myth as most of the personality disorders never come into clinical recognition and prevails in community and even among doctors as well! They are frequently found in non-psychiatric health care setting but prevalence is definitely higher in mentally ill. They are reported less because of poor recognition and diagnosis.
❌ Personality Disorders start only after adulthood.
✅ Other than a few organic personality changes in chronic epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases, most of the
personalities have their origins traced to childhood but are diagnosed only in adulthood as they are subject to change
until late teenage and young adulthood.
❌ Personality disorders cannot be treated.
✅ This therapeutic nihilism commonly exist because of the resistance to treatment and poor response to short term
therapies. Rather than the whole personality, the maladaptive traits like poor temper control, affective instability etc.
are better treated using fairly established evidence based pharmacotherapy and psychotherapies which improves the
overall functioning and adjustment of the person.
