Pathological Personality Traits (DSM-5), Risk Factors, and Mental Health

Abstract

In Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), a dimensional model of maladaptive personality traits is proposed. This model coexists with, and is an alternative to, the traditional categorical taxonomy and defines a personality trait as a tendency to feel, perceive, behave, and think in relatively consistent ways across time and across situations. Although consistent, traits may also change throughout one's life (APA, 2013).The DSM-5's new model consists of 25 lower order personality facets that are classified into five higher order domains: Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism. These five broad domains are maladaptive variants of the five domains of the extensively validated and replicated Five-Factor personality model known as the "Big Five": Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Lucidity (or Openness; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012). Although the DSM-5 focuses on personality traits that are associated with psychopathology, which is the traditional interest of the DSM classification system, it also recognizes the existence of healthy polar opposites, that is, adaptive and resilient personality traits, which are usually assessed by "normal" personality inventories (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).The Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) was developed to assess the maladaptive personality traits proposed in the DSM-5 (Krueger et al., 2012). There is an increasing body of research that supports the psychometric properties of the PID-5, with an internal consistency α >.70 for all of its dimensions. Evidence of the five-factorial structure has been found in student, community, and clinical samples (see Al-Dajani, Gralnick, and Bagby, 2016, for a review).

The Positive Personality Model (PPM): Exploring a New Conceptual Framework for Personality Assessment

“…This instrument is the short version of the 220-item inventory and it assesses the main five domains with 25 items: Antagonism (e.g., “It is not so bad to hurt someone’s feelings,”) Detachment (e.g., “I stay away from romantic relationships,”) Disinhibition (e.g., “I feel as if I acted completely on impulse,”) Negative Affect (e.g., “I worry about almost everything,”) and Psychoticism (e.g., “I have seen things that weren’t really there”). Regarding its psychometric properties, the Argentinean local study provided evidence for the five-factor structure, and of divergent validity and good internal consistency ( Góngora and Castro Solano, 2017 ). In this sample, Cronbach’s alphas for all traits indicated good internal consistency (>0.70).…”

Dysfunctional personality features, non-scientifically supported causal beliefs, and emotional problems during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

“…Starting from these considerations, we expected that participants with clinically relevant emotional problems may be efficiently discriminated by negative affectivity and detachment domains, as well as by non-scientifically supported causal beliefs. Indeed, previous findings showed that Negative Affectivity and Detachment were negatively associated with emotional well-being (e.g., Góngora & Castro Solano, 2017). Recently, Lai et al' (2020) showed in a sample of 1257 health care workers that women experienced more psychological burden than male participants.…”

A Brief but Comprehensive Review of Research on the Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders

“…Instruments related to the AMPD have been translated into a number of different languages and cultural contexts. For example, the PID-5 is available and has been successfully applied in Arabic [71], Brazilian [72,73] 63,86], and Swedish [64]. Further developments are underway on assessing severity and style according to the AMPD.…”