The value of retaining personality disorder diagnoses.

Abstract

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003) defines diagnosis as both "the art or act of identifying a disease from its signs and symptoms" and "a concise technical description of a taxon" (p. 344), whereas Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary (1965) states that diagnosis is "the art of distinguishing one disease from another" as well as "the determination of the nature of a case of disease" (p. 411). Dorland's definition further differentiates diagnosis into clinical diagnosis, which is what clinical psychology and psychiatry often simply refer to as "diagnosis based on the symptoms shown during life, irrespective of the morbid changes producing them" (p. 412). In other words, it is the act or art of identifying a disease. the process or steps that are gone through in identifying a taxon (the name given to a group within a formal system or nomenclature) are also seen as part of diagnosis. thus, although diagnosis is often thought of as the specific taxon that is ultimately arrived at, diagnosis, by the definitions above, also includes the manner in which the diagnosis is the Value of retaInIng PersonalIty DIsorDer DIagnoses Kenneth r. sIlK

Toward a firmer foundation for ICD‐11: On the conceptualization and assessment of personality pathology

“…They are not panaceas and present their own set of challenges in clinical and research settings (e.g. delineating a core set of traits that are generalizable across gender, age and other variables, identifying severity thresholds that distinguish normal from pathological personality functioning; Silk, ; Zachar & First, ). It is important that we continue to refine trait models of personality pathology in ICD‐11 and DSM‐5.1, but we must also recognize that the future of PD diagnosis likely lies in multidimensional evaluation using multiple assessment methods.…”

The trait–type dialectic: Construct validity, clinical utility, and the diagnostic process.

“…Most empirical studies and reviews of the literature on personality pathology have articulated the strengths of one perspective or the other, with some researchers favoring the categorical view (Morf, 2006; Silk, 2015), and others favoring the trait approach (Livesley, 2011; Simms & Calabrese, 2016). There have been a few efforts to develop integrative models that combine features of the categorical and trait perspectives (Berghuis, Kamphuis, & Verheul, 2014; Hopwood et al, 2011; Krueger, Skodol, Livesley, Shrout, & Huang, 2007), but these are the exception, and researchers typically argue that one model or the other has clear advantages with respect to conceptualizing, operationalizing, and diagnosing personality disorders (PDs).…”