There are high numbers of therapy dropout and typical response to pharmacotherapy is modest and limited in scope. Stability and change in PD manifestations is considered in the context of co-occurring mental disorders. Beyond the facts that there are multiple kinds of stability, personality traits tend to be more stable than the symptoms. Older people have more stable personalities than the children and adolescents and those that are sampled at their low point in life tend to improve more than others based on given factors. PD researchers are exploring integrating personality trait and PD research, and it is in this context that recent research findings have challenged a simplistic view of personality and PD stability. PD-based dysfunction is quite stable and is clearly more so than diagnostic criteria are. Review
Personality Disorder (PD) in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 689) is defined, in part, as personality traits that are ‘‘stable and of long duration,’’ as well as ‘‘inflexible and pervasive.’’ Consequently, PD is characterized by psychosocial dysfunction, including, for example, having conflict-ridden or unstable social and marital relationships, or a notableabsence of such relationships; showing poor judgment and decision making or a marked inability to make decisions; and having legal problems and employment …show more content…
These gaps reflect important areas that require more research to be carried on. It would be useful for researchers to evaluate different types of stability in longitudinal studies. To avoid bias in research outcomes, sampling issues need to be considered more carefully as well. For example, in clinical studies of personality stability in order to avoid confounding personality stability with regression to the mean and other issues.
The researchers also need to think more carefully about how the same dimension can be more or less stable across different levels of time. It would be useful to measure aspects of the environment that might influence personality stability with more frequency and precession, given that very little is known about how environment impacts personality stability and change at this point. The question to measure personality development across the lifespan need to be addressed. The issue of personality disorder should be done not only to the adults but children and adolescents. Though the hypothesis suits the research question, it would be more advisable for the researchers to add more questions to the hypothesis in order to come up with more significant results. This is due to the ways in which personality traits, personality disorder and other psychopathology variables are similar or different in terms of stability and change that are not well understood.