THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PATIENT, INFORMANT, SOCIAL-WORKER, AND CONSENSUS DIAGNOSES OF PERSONALITY-DISORDER IN ELDERLY DEPRESSED INPATIENTS

Two psychiatrists simultaneously administered the Personality Assessme nt Form (PAF) to 20 depressed geropsychiatric inpatients and to 20 of their relatives (informants). a social worker also completed PAF ratin gs, and a consensus conference independently assigned an Axis II diagn osis. For patient interviews, categorical and dimensional interrater r eliability indices for cluster and total personality disorders (PDs) w ere generally marginal. For informant interviews, categorical interrat er reliability indices for cluster and total PDs were also marginal, b ut dimensional reliability was high. Consistent with previous research , agreement between categorical scores yielded by the four assessment methods was poor, but agreement between dimensional scores was general ly better. It appears that patients, family members, and staff maintai n different perspectives on patients' personality that, if overlapping , may provide useful diagnostic data.