Elderly suicide attempters in Turkey

Abstract

Neurosis-personality disorders and eatingdisorders; old age psychiatry GlobalAssessmentof Functioning scale.d) CAGE(Ewing. 1984). e) the alcohol modulefrom a 1981version of SCAN.all with estimated reliability. Results: 160 patients with variety of diagnoses (without schizophrenia and organic conditions) were assessed: 61 with BPD. 39 with other PDs. and 60 withoutPDs. 6-monthprevalence of BPD in a Sofia psychiatric sample is 3.19% for the Clinic. 1.43% for the outpatient service, and 5.17% for the day hospital. The symptoms with highest discriminative value for BPD (i.e. descriptive validity). and the factor structureof the "borderline" syndrome(thus givingevidencefor its constructvalidity) were estimated. Acute psychoses and dysthymia are significantly more frequent in patients with BPD.The absence of any PD predicts moderately higher probability for major depression, and BPD and female sex have positive predict ive power for dysthymia. Conclusions: While evidencefor the syndromevalidity of BPD is good. it is a rarer condition. although not uncommon, in a nonWestem psychiatric sample. where constructs like "cultural anhedonia" may be relevant. Although there is modest predictive powerof axis II diagnoses for some axis I disorders,the diagnoses of "personality"and "illness" are relatively independent.