Screening for personality disorder: a comparison of personality disorder assessment by patients and informants

✍ Scribed by Dr Paul Walters; Paul Moran; Partha Choudhury; Tennyson Lee; Anthony Mann

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 96 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1049-8931
• DOI: 10.1002/mpr.162

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV Personality Disorders (SCID‐II Version 2.0) is becoming the most favoured instrument to measure personality disorder but takes up to an hour to complete. The Standardized Assessment of Personality (SAP), an informant‐based measure, takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Both instruments have been validated independently. This study aimed to determine whether the SAP is a suitable screening instrument for personality disorder as measured by the SCID‐II.

Fifty‐seven psychiatric patients were assessed for personality disorder using both the SAP and the SCID‐II. The SAP assessments were conducted blind to the results of the SCID‐II assessments.

Agreement between the two instruments in this population was low (kappa = 0.3). The level of agreement differed between personality disorder categories, ranging from kappa = 0.4 (antisocial) to −0.1 (narcissistic).

In this population of patients, the SAP proved to be a poor screen for the SCID‐II. The study highlights the discrepancy between informant and self‐report assessments for personality disorder. Copyright © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd.