Evidence-Based Assessment of Personality Disorder

The purpose of this article is to provide a description and discussion of the evidence-based assessment of personality disorder. Considered herein is the assessment of the Section II personality disorders included within the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.; DSM-5-TR), within Section III of DSM-5-TR, and within the 11th edition of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (WHO). The recommendation for an evidence-based assessment is for a multimethod approach: first administer a self-report inventory to alert the clinician to maladaptive personality functioning that might not have otherwise been anticipated, followed by a semi-structured interview to verify the personality disorder’s presence. The validity of this multimethod strategy can be improved further by considering the impact of other disorders on the assessment, documenting temporal stability, and establishing a compelling, empirical basis for cutoff points.