Personality disorder in young people: Development, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment

Personality disorders are an often-misunderstood phenomenon. Many of the persistent misconceptions are related to the fact that personality and personality disorder are understood as a simple collection of a person’s trait characteristics. In this paper, we demystify the meaning of personality and personality disorder by drawing on decades of research on personality development and more recent research on the development of personality disorders. We show that while temperament and personality traits play an important role in setting the stage for the potential development of personality disorder (and other disorders), the onset of personality disorder depends on the interruption of the developmental task of creating a coherent and stable sense of self and identity in adolescents. In this view of personality functioning, psychological processes are identified that go beyond traits to identify malleable prevention and treatment targets that serve to support healthy personality development in young people.