Personality Disorders

To meet the identification of personality disorder, which is occasionally called character disorder, the patient's problematical behaviors must come out in two or more of the following areas:

a) perception and interpretation of the persons and other people
b) concentration and duration of feelings and their suitability to circumstances
c) relationships with outside peoples
d) aptitude to control impulses

Personality disorders have their onset in late teenage years or early adulthood. Doctors hardly ever give a diagnosis of personality disorder to children on the grounds that children's personalities are still in the process of development and may change significantly by the time they are in their late teens. But, in retrospect, many persons with personality disorders could be judged to have shown proof of the problems in childhood.