Personality disorder symptoms are supposed to be stable, enduring, and persistent across the lifespan, however researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Harvard report evidence that such disabling psychiatric conditions are flexible and appreciable change over time is possible.
One of the cardinal assumptions in psychiatry and psychology has long been that individuals who have personality disorders will be the way they are for their lifetime and that treatment offers little real hope of change. In fact, the official diagnostic nomenclature used in modern psychiatry (the DSM-IV of the American Psychiatric Association), describes these disorders as "inflexible" and "stable over time." Results from a landmark longitudinal study, which has followed a large number of young adults over time, now call into question the assumption that personality disorders never change.
The Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders, under the direction of Professor Mark F. Lenzenweger at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has recently discovered that individuals who have personality disorder symptoms will show significant declines in their symptoms with the passage of time. "On average, our subjects showed a decline of 1.4 personality disorder features per year," noted Lenzenweger.
What is particularly fascinating about this finding is that the change is not explained by exposure to conventional treatments or the presence of another form of mental disorder, such as anxiety, depression, or other illnesses. The subjects in the study were examined carefully for personality disorder features at three time points over a four year period and a complex statistical procedure known as growth curve analysis helped to detect the changes that were happening in the subjects. The nature of the study design helped to assure that any observed change in the personality disorder features was not due to artifacts or shortcomings that plague other studies.