Screening Items for Personality Disorders in Older Adults: A Multi-Center Study of Psychiatric Inpatients and Outpatients in The Netherlands

Abstract

There is little to no information available regarding the utility of screening items for the identification of personality disorders in older adults. This study sought to identify the best screening items among a group of 33 items that were identified by experts as particularly useful. The items were presented to 309 older adults in a Dutch multi-center study of mental health care patients; 143 patients responded on two occasions. Two of the items proved to be most useful: “I like to be in control” and “I have sometimes said that I would like to put an end to my life.” Together, these items correctly identified personality pathology at a rate of 65%: Administration on two occasions produced more than 70% correct prediction. Time-pressured clinicians may want to use these items as a brief screener; together they perform much better than chance at identifying personality pathology in older adults. Additional research is needed to more comprehensively demonstrate the reliability, predictive validity, and generalizability of these items.

Keywords:

• older adults
• personality disorders
• screening

Notes

1. The institutions were: the Mondriaan for the Heerlen-Maastricht region, the GGzE for the Eindhoven region, the GGz Breburg Groep for the Tilburg region, and the Parnassia Bavogroep for The Hague region.