Distribution of Personality Disorder Tendency of Outpatients in Psychological Counseling / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective：To explore the distribution of personality disorder tendency of outpatients in psychological counseling departments.Methods：Systematic sampling was used to get the sample population from Shanghai Psychological Counseling Center.The Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire(PDQ~(+4))was administered to 1402 clients to screen personality disorders.Results：The subscales for different type of personality disorder(PD)and total score of PDQ~(+4) were higher than normal sample(e.g.total score of PDQ~(+4):client(38.23±17.04)vs.normal sample(22.79±14.10),P<0.001).The score of borderline subscales in female clients were higher than that of males [borderline:female(4.25±2.48)vs.male(3.97±2.41),P<0.05],the score of antisocial,paranoid and schizotypal subscales in male clients were higher than that of females [antisocial:female(1.31)vs.male(1.71),P<0.001;paranoid:female(2.75)vs.male(3.02),P<0.01;schizotypal:female(3.31)vs.male(3.56),P<0.05].Age stratification showed that the subscales for different type of PD of PDQ~(+4) were decreased with age [e.g.,total score of PDQ~(+4):18～24 years(41.73)vs.25～34 years(39.46)vs.35～44 years(33.88)vs.≥ 45 years(30.64),Ps<0.001],the positive rate of PDQ~(+4) subscales of obsessive-compulsive(58.5%)and avoidant PDs(54.0%)were higher than others,followed by borderline PD(44.4%).Factor analysis was used for the score of PDQ~(+4),factor 1 to 3 corresponded to cluster C,B and A personality disorders respectively,and the total variance explained 67%. Conclusion：There are different rates of personality deviation between psychological counseling clients and normal sample in China.Some traits of personality disorders can be improved with the increasing of age.The abstracted factors by factor analysis are very consistent with what originally proposed in the theory of personality disorder.It should be paid attention to PD tendency of clients during psychological counseling.