The relationship between mental and personality disorders in psychiatric outpatients

Abstract

Ample empirical evidence supports the comorbidity of mental and personality disorders. Psychological and psychiatric models from various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches try to explain the relationship between personality and mental disorders. In this research the relationship between mental and personality disorders in psychiatric outpatients was evaluated from both psychoanalytic and phenomenological perspectives with the use of self-assessment questionnaires. The main aim of the research was to confirm the link between specific symptoms and personality disorders or traits. The relationship between personality pathology and mental disorders was studied with the help of the symptomatic scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 2003) and the Questionnaire of Personality Disorders (VMO2; Benedik, 2004). PAI is a standardised psychological self-assessment questionnaire, designed to obtain information on critical clinical variables that help to diagnose and plan a treatment for people with mental disorders (Morey, 2009). VMO2 is a self-assessment questionnaire constructed for the assessment of personality disorders, and is based on DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000), Beck's theory of dysfunctional beliefs (Beck and Freeman, 2004), and psychoanalytic theories of personality (Kernberg, 1986). Questionnaires were completed by 129 adult psychiatric outpatients (56% women) with various mental disorders. Results from confirmatory factor analysis support the assumed relationship between personality and symptomatic pathology for different mental disorders. Scales involving severe personality pathology were related to more severe mental (e.g. psychotic) symptoms whereas mild personality disorders were related to “neurotic” symptoms. Scales describing borderline pathology were characterized by heterogeneous correlations with mild as well as severe symptomatic scales. The results show partial support for the psychodynamic theory of the relationship between personality types and specific psychiatric symptoms. The results are in line with previous empirical studies showing the relationship between some personality disorders and specific mental disorders. Despite some methodological problems and uncontrolled factors which could influence the results, our study supports the assumed relation between phenomenological aspects of personality characteristics and mental disorders.