Psychological assessment with the DSM–5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders: Tradition and innovation.

Abstract

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition (DSM-5) Section III Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD; APA, 2013) represents an innovative system for simultaneous psychiatric classification and psychological assessment of personality disorders (PD). The AMPD combines major paradigms of personality assessment and provides an original, heuristic, flexible, and practical framework that enriches clinical thinking and practice. Origins, emerging research, and clinical application of the AMPD for diagnosis and psychological assessment are reviewed. The AMPD integrates assessment and research traditions, facilitates case conceptualization, is easy to learn and use, and assists in providing patient feedback. New as well as existing tests and psychometric methods may be used to operationalize the AMPD for clinical assessments.

Personality Constructs and Paradigms in the AlternativeDSM-5Model of Personality Disorder

“…The AMPD does not model the psychiatric syndrome in its classificatory structure. It pluralistically models PD from conceptual and empirical advances in personality science (see Waugh et al, 2017).…”

“…Our results establish the presence of diverse personality constructs and paradigms within the AMPD. This furthermore suggests clinicians of different theoretical backgrounds and assessment traditions should find the AMPD learnable and useful in part because of their familiarity with aspects of the AMPD (see Waugh et al, 2017). Emerging research shows the AMPD enjoys clinical utility (Morey et al, 2014) and that both Criterion A and B are quite learnable (Garcia, Skadberg, Schmidt, Bierma, Shorter, & Waugh, 2018).…”

“…the multivariate space of pathological personality traits into a set of five correlated dimensions (Krueger & Markon, 2014). This integration between seemingly disparate traditions in personality science offers many scientific and practical advantages (see Waugh et al, 2017).…”

Interpersonal Dynamics in Personality and Personality Disorders

“…However, there has also been a longstanding interest in demarcating different aspects of personality to provide a more comprehensive portrait of people (in addition to those discussed in the preceding section, see also Adler, Wagner, & McAdams, ; Bornstein, ; Dawood & Pincus, ; Dunlop, ; Greenwald & Farnham, ; Hopwood et al, ; Leary, ; McAdams & Pals, ; Vazire, ). I am sceptical that any single model of the different levels of personality will serve all purposes (Rychlak, ; Waugh et al, ; Wiggins, ). Contemporary integrative interpersonal theory was developed to synthesize the structure and dynamics of personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy (Pincus, ; Pincus, Lukowitsky, Wright, & Eichler, ) and it is therefore pitched at a useful level for conceptualizing dynamic aspects of personality and PD.…”

A framework for treating DSM‐5 alternative model for personality disorder features

“…Perceived clinical utility is among the chief reasons for the persistence of the categorical model in the DSM . A number of case examples are now available in the literature for using the AMPD to develop treatment plans, and practice reviews generally suggest acceptability among clinicians . However, a framework for connecting AMPD features to specific therapeutic techniques is currently unavailable.…”