Which DSM-IV personality disorders are most strongly associated with indices of psychosocial morbidity in psychiatric outpatients?

The DSM-5 Work Group for Personality and Personality Disorders (PDs) recommended retaining 6 specific PD "types" (antisocial, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, and schizotypal) and eliminating the other 4 PDs currently included in DSM-IV (paranoid, schizoid, histrionic, and dependent). One important clinical aspect of PDs is their association with indices of psychosocial morbidity. Because the literature on the relationship between PDs and psychosocial morbidity in psychiatric patients is limited, we undertook the current analysis of the Rhode Island Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services project database to examine which PDs were most strongly associated with a variety of measures of psychosocial morbidity. We tested the hypothesis that the disorders recommended for retention in DSM-5 would be associated with more severe morbidity than the disorders recommended for deletion. A total of 2150 psychiatric outpatients were evaluated with semistructured diagnostic interviews for DSM-IV Axes I and II disorders and 7 measures of psychosocial morbidity. We examined the correlation between each PD dimensional score and each measure of morbidity and then conducted multiple regression analyses to determine which PDs were independently associated with the indices of morbidity. For the 6 PDs proposed for retention in DSM-5, 36 (85.7%) of the 42 correlations were significant, whereas for the 4 PDs proposed for deletion, 26 (92.9%) of the 28 correlations were significant. In the regression analyses for the 6 PDs proposed for retention in DSM-5, 19 (45.2%) of the 42 β coefficients were significant, whereas for the 4 PDs proposed for deletion, 7 (25.0%) of the 28 β coefficients were significant. The results of the present study, along with the results of other studies, do not provide clear evidence for the preferential retention of some PDs over others based on their association with indices of psychosocial morbidity.