Assessment of Personality Disorders in Older Adults

描述(申请人提供)：很少有研究集中在老年人的人格障碍上。然而，很明显，人格障碍在晚年可能会使人相当虚弱。目前，还没有专门为评估老年人人格障碍而设计的适合年龄的诊断标准。《诊断和统计手册-四》提出的许多标准侧重于较年轻的社会和职业环境。缺乏适合年龄的标准迫使研究人员和临床医生根据现有标准得出结论，这些标准可能是不充分的：将进行三项研究，以制定一套适合老年人使用的诊断标准。研究1旨在确定当前标准中哪一项提供了对人格病理存在的年龄偏见的估计。研究2旨在修订老年人使用的现行标准，并在社区样本中确定这些新标准的可靠性和有效性。研究3旨在通过在临床样本中复制研究2的结果来证明新标准的实用性。这些研究的发现有望为成年人带来更好的评估标准，并进一步了解人格病理如何在老年人身上表现出来。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Little research has focused on personality disorders in older adults. It is clear, however, that personality disorders can be quite debilitating in late life. Currently, there are no age appropriate diagnostic criteria specifically designed to evaluate personality disorders in older adults. Many of the criteria put forth by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV focus on a younger social and occupational context. The absence of age-appropriate criteria forces researchers and clinicians to draw conclusions based on existing criteria, which are likely inadequate: Three studies will be conducted to develop a set of diagnostic criteria that is appropriate to use with older adults. Study 1 is designed to determine which of the current criteria provide age-biased estimates of the presence of personality pathology. Study 2 is designed to revise the current criteria for use with older adults and establish the reliability and validity of those new criteria in a community sample. Study 3 is intended to demonstrate the utility of the new criteria by replicating the findings of study 2 in a clinical sample. The findings from these studies hopefully will lead to better assessment criteria for adults and further understanding of how personality pathology manifests itself in older adults.