Reclassifying personality disorders

To divide the population into those who are normal and those who have personality disorder does not reflect the wide range of personality variation and associated levels of pathology.3,4 Over the past 30 years, studies examining the epidemiology of personality pathology have repeatedly shown that the prototypes on which current systems for classifying personality disorder are based do not exist.3 The diagnosis is also unnecessarily stigmatising, which has led to reluctance to use the diagnosis in clinical practice5 even though epidemiological findings worldwide suggest personality disorder is common.6 There are 11 categories of personality disorder in DSM-IV, but most are seldom used, with only borderline and antisocial (dissocial) personality disorders being diagnosed with any frequency.