Self-defeating personality disorder. A cross-national study of clinical utility.

The clinical utility of the DSM-II-R-proposed diagnostic category self-defeating personality disorder (SDPD) was assessed through the presentation of prototypic case histories to American and British psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. The most frequent diagnoses assigned were SDPD and personality disorder not otherwise specified; no alternative diagnoses were consistently provided. More than one in two professionals reported treating patients with a condition similar to the SDPD cases, and approximately 65% of these patients were reported to be female. American and British nonpatients were also assessed through the administration of an SDPD self-report questionnaire. The results suggest that the reported high prevalence of SDPD in the practitioners' patients is not a result of the expression of a general personality trait, and the reported greater incidence of SDPD in women is not a reflection of a normal, culturally learned, female behavior pattern.