TEMPERAMENT AND STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY DISORDER SYMPTOMS

Based on new developments in epigenetics, personality disorders (PD) are defined as maladaptive syndromes that represent a failure of integrative functions of personality, caused by biogenetic disposition and/or pathological environmental influences. Despite the advantages of new classifications (DSM-IV, ICD-10), there are serious diagnostic problems such as multiple diagnosis and failure to diagnose atypical and mixed cases. In addition to this, there is no independent measure of impairment that would be the "key" to diagnosis and help determine the common, latent dimensions of personality disorders. Discovering dimensions that underlie personality disorders, as well as the degree of severity of personality disorders, would enable the uncovering of essential parameters ("core traits") for setting the diagnosis. The objectives of this study are as follows: 1) determine dimensional structure of PD, i.e. personality traits underlying maladaptive behavior, both qualitatively and quantitatively; 2) determine PD symptom clusters; 3) find the most efficient and clinically most suitable way to diagnose the impairment that significantly discriminates between normal extreme behaviors and maladaptive behaviors; 4) establish the degree of severity of personality disorder (categorical diagnostics); 5) test the correlation between PD symptoms and personality structure and dynamics; 6) test the prevalence of comorbidity of PD and other psychiatric disorders and 7) analyze the presence of PD in the category of adolescents aged 15-18. Timely, simplified diagnosis of the dimensions and severity of personality disorders in the clinical population would contribute to improved, integrative and individualized treatment focused on the person and not the disorder.