ABSTRACT
The assessment of personality disorders (PDs) can be a challenging task for clinicians. Not only must the clinician comprehensively evaluate the patient for the presence of the many symptoms of the individual PDs that are presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Text Revision (DSM–IV–TR) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000) but the clinician must also determine whether the symptoms are characteristic of the patient’s long-term functioning, reflect the patient’s functioning across a variety of personal and social contexts, and cause clinically significant impairment or distress. Furthermore, the clinician must determine that the presenting symptoms suggesting personality pathology are not better accounted for by other psychiatric disorders. Clearly, the assessment of PDs can be both daunting and taxing.
