Repetition of parasuicide : personality disorder, personality and adversity

Dirks, Bryan Larry

Repetition of parasuicide : personality disorder, personality and adversity

Doctoral Thesis

1996

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health

Faculty

Faculty of Health Sciences

Abstract

This study aims to describe the relationship of personality disorders to the repetition of parasuicide whilst taking cognizance of recent developments in the classification of and assessment for personality disorders. This study also aims to determine whether risk factors described by other authors for further suicidal behavior are characteristic of these patients locally. This study also aims to describe the contribution of newly described personality dimensions to repetition of parasuicide. This study also describes suicidal behavior in the follow-up period of a cohort of parasuicide patients who were seen in the emergency psychiatric service during follow-up. This study also examines the comorbidity between the personality disorders categories defined by the clinical criteria of the Tenth International Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders or ICD-10, (World Health organization, 1992). This study compares the co-occurence of these new personality disorder categories with the comorbidity which has been observed in older classification systems (American Psychiatric Association; 1980, 1987) in order to determine whether this new classification system has led to less comorbidity among the personality disorders. This study also examines aspects of the relationship between informant based diagnoses of personality disorder and personality dimensions described by Cloninger et al (1994).