Threading a pathway through the forest of mood and personality disorders

Abstract

SUMMARYThe classification of mood and personality disorders has become unnecessarily complicated. It has become bogged down by well-meaning but unhelpful subcategories that puzzle the will of clinicians to make useful judgements. The answer is to think of bipolar, depressive and personality disorders as each constituting a spectrum of severity and not to be too preoccupied with individual labels. It would also be useful to avoid the diagnostic chimera of borderline personality disorder, a condition that defies proper classification.