Assessment tools for affect regulation and quality of object relations in personality disorders: The predictive impact on initial treatment engagement.

On the road to DSM-V, instruments are demanded that provide clinically meaningful information, for example, predictions about psychotherapy utilization. Comparison of five different instruments in a sample of 297 patients with personality disorders showed that the Structured Clinical Interviews for DSM-IV (SCID), SWAP-200, and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) lead to predictive models concerning initial therapy engagement. The Affect Experience and Affect Regulation Q-sort (AREQ) provided information concerning therapy rejection. The findings point to the importance of interpersonal, affective, and psycho-structural functioning in the diagnostic procedure of personality disorders.