A comparison of clinical and self-report diagnoses of DSM-III personality disorders in 552 patients

This report examines the relationship between clinicians' diagnoses of personality disorder and self-report diagnoses of personality disorder obtained from the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ). The results from 552 patients showed general lack of agreement between clinical and self-report diagnoses of DSM-III personality diagnoses. The best agreement obtained was for Borderline Personality Disorder: κ = 0.46, and r = .51 for scaled ratings. Possible sources of disagreement including failings of the self-report questionnaire, difficulties in relying upon patients' self-reports, lack of reliability of clinical diagnoses of personality, and possible inherent lack of reliability of several of the DSM-III personality disorders are discussed.