Assessment of personality disorders in students appearing for medical school entrance examination.

OBJECTIVE

: To investigate personality disorders in medical students appearing for medical school entrance exam.

METHODS

The cross-sectional study was conducted at Peshawar Medical College from August 2015 to May 2016, and comprised all the students who undertook medical school entrance examination of the College. They were asked to fill screening questionnaire of international personality disorder examination, based on International Classification of Disease version-10. Demographic information was collected from the application form. After screening of all the medical students during the entrance exam, detailed interview was taken from the students who were invited for admission interview. The data was analyzed using SPSS 20.

RESULTS

There were 1334 subjects with a mean age of 18.91.41 years. Of the total, 745(55.8%) were male students. The most common personality traits were anankastic 1170(88%), schizoid 932(70%) and dependent 705(53%). Of the total, 322(24%) students were called for interview. The mean age of the interview sample was 18.91.03 years and 189 (58.7%) of them were females. Definite personality disorders in order of frequency were dependent 3(0.93%), schizoid 2(0.62%) and anankastic 1(0.31%). There was a significant correlation of female gender with histrionics, anxious, dependent and borderline personality disorder (p<0.05). There was a significant correlation between academic performance and dissocial, impulsive and borderline personality disorder separately (p<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Anankastic, schizoid and dependent personality traits and disorders were the commonest on screening and detailed interview.