One in 20 Has Personality Disorder
News section

Nearly one in 20 people in the UK has a personality disorder, according to new research.

The most common type is obsessive-compulsive disorder - whose high-profile sufferers include footballer David Beckham.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, involved interviews with 8,886 people followed by one-on-one interviews with 638 people.

It found that those who had been in care were more likely to suffer from disorders - and three times more likely to suffer from paranoid or schizoid disorders, where they feel withdrawn, isolated and have few friends.

The researchers said this could lead to earlier interventions for people leaving care. Research also found that all personality disorders apart from the schizotypal type - where sufferers have some delusions similar to those with full schizophrenia - are more common in men than women.

Anti-social personality disorder was also found to be five times more common in men than women.

Disorders such as paranoid personality disorder were also more common among those who were divorced or separated, unemployed or on a low weekly income.

People who had disorders that made them avoidant, dependent on others or obsessive-compulsive were also more likely to fall into the unemployment group.

Professor Jeremy Coid, from the University of London, said he hoped the findings would lead to better preventative treatments, especially for the young.
The Daily Mail, 2nd May 2006

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: And the last paragraph is surely the nub of it - preventative drug treatment for arbitrary personality disorders. This scam was exposed by Mary Wakefield in the Telegraph and written up by no less than the British Medical Journal itself. Moral of the story: avoid psychiatrists.

Further Resources

The Mind Game by Phillip Day

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