Assessment of the severity of personality disorder
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Testing the psychometric properties of a measurement scale to assess the severity of personality disorder
IRAS ID
138586
Contact name
Mike Crawford
Contact email
Research summary
Personality disorders are a heterogeneous group of conditions which are characterised by ingrained and maladaptive thoughts, feelings and behaviours that lead to personal distress and impaired social functioning. The current definition of personality disorder as defined in International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), means that people with very different levels of social functioning and risk of harm to self and others are given the same diagnosis. It has been suggested that the type and number of problems that people with PD had could be used to indicate how severe their disorder was. This has led to the development of a new system for classifying personality disorder which will form the basis of the new international classification system being developed by the World Health Organization (ICD-11). However, assessment tools for assigning level of severity of personality disorder do not exist. Building on work by Moran and colleagues (2003), we have developed a draft ‘Scale for the Assessment of Severity of Personality Disorder’ (SAS-PD) comprised of nine questions which each correspond to current diagnostic subcategories of personality disorder in ICD-10.
The main objectives of the study are to test this nine-item questionnaire (SAS-PD) against a gold standard assessment of personality disorder (the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM–IV Personality Disorders), to examine the validity of this brief assessment scale and establish the optimal cut-off points to assign levels of mild, moderate and severe personality disorder. Test-retest reliability of SAS-PD will be assessed by administering the scale on two occasions separated by at least two weeks.
A ‘gold-standard’ diagnosis of personality disorder will be made by two experienced clinicians with expertise in the assessment and treatment of personality disorder using ICD-11 definitions of severity of PD – this judgment will be based on information from SCID-II, the Social Functioning Questionnaire and the risk event history.REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/1577
Date of REC Opinion
29 Oct 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion