The prevalence of personality pathology in adolescence.
Date
2009-09-03T06:12:35Z
Authors
Card, Melissa
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Abstract
Over the past twenty years, there seems to have been an increased interest on the topic of
adolescent personality pathology among researchers and clinicians in the field of
psychiatry and clinical psychology. There have been many contentious debates on the
topic, the most prominent being around the possibility of diagnosing a personality
disorder or variant thereof in adolescence. With this in mind, the researcher attempted to
understand some of the most pertinent debates as well as investigate some of the
hypotheses proposed in the arguments. The main focus of the study was on the possibility
of diagnosing personality pathology in adolescence and whether or not this was being
achieved in an inpatient psychiatric ward.
The present study quantitatively investigated the prevalence of personality pathology as
well as the extent to which health care professionals in South Africa are diagnosing
various personality pathologies among adolescents admitted to an inpatient psychiatric
ward. The data collected has been analysed using the statistical study of frequencies and
correlations, in order to assess whether there were positive correlations between genders,
Axis I disorders, a set of reported problematic or pathological behavioural symptoms and
having an Axis II diagnosis. The results reveal that clinicians are cautiously diagnosing
personality pathology in an inpatient adolescent psychiatric ward, with the borderline
personality pathology being the most prevalent.
Description
Keywords
Personality pathology, Adolescence