Introduction: Over the past few years, renewed interest on personality disorders among elderly people has re-emerged. This is an important point as personality disorders determine a poorer response to treatments, a poorer prognosis of any psychiatric disorder, as well as a higher consumption of sanitary resources.
Methods: Our sample includes 2082 patients diagnosed as having personality disorders. 199 of them are older than 65 years. The main goal is to study the comorbidity between Axis I and Axis II in elder people and compare results with a parallel analysis done among younger subjects in the sample.
Results: The more frequent types of personality disorders in elderly people are Paranoid, Histrionic and Schizoid. In younger patients the types Borderline, N.S., Histrionic and Antisocial are predominant. Comparing both groups in terms of comorbidity between Axis I and II, significant differences are found. First, the predominant cluster in elder people is cluster A, the more frequent comorbidity here that of schizophrenia in Axis I. Other clusters are commonly associated with affective disorders. On the other hand, the more frequent comorbid disorder within the group of younger people is affective disorders. Other significant results that can be taken out from our study are that elder people consume more sanitary resources and that the functional measure G.A.F. is significantly smaller in this age group, indicating worse functionality.
Discussion: Cluster A is predominant over the rest of clusters in elderly people diagnosed as having personality disorders. Within the younger group, cluster B is much more frequent.
· Comorbidity with Axis I in the elder group shows that schizophrenia is the predominant associated disorder with personality disorders.
· Types Paranoid, Histrionic and schizoid are more frequent in elderly people, while in the younger group Borderline, N.S., and Histrionic are predominant.
Back to S008 Psychotherapy in late life: theoretical and quantitative issues
Back to The Eleventh International Congress