Personality disorder coverage, prevalence, and convergence: do the DSM-5 's two models of personality disorder identify the same patients?

BACKGROUND: Research on the Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) in DSM-5 's Section-III has demonstrated acceptable interrater reliability, a largely consistent latent structure, substantial correlations with theoretically and clinically relevant measures, and evidence for incremental concurrent and predictive validity after controlling for DSM-5 's Section II categorical personality disorders (PDs). However, the AMPD is not yet widely used clinically. One clinician concern may be caseness - that the new model will diagnose a different set of PD patients from that with which they are familiar. The primary aim of this study is to determine whether this concern is valid, by testing how well the two models converge in terms of prevalence and coverage.

METHOD: Participants were 305 psychiatric outpatients and 302 community residents not currently in mental-health treatment who scored above threshold on the Iowa Personality Disorder Screen (Langbehn et al., ). Participants were administered a semi-structured interview for DSM-5 PD, which was scored for both Section II and III PDs.

RESULTS: Convergence across the two PD models was variable for specific PDs, Good when specific PDs were aggregated, and Very Good for 'any PD.'

CONCLUSIONS: Results provide strong evidence that the AMPD yields the same overall prevalence of PD as the current model and, further, identifies largely the same overall population. It also addresses well-known problems of the current model, is more consistent with the ICD-11 PD model, and provides more complete, individualized characterizations of persons with PD, thereby offering multiple reasons for its implementation in clinical settings.