The following extracts from the World Psychiatric Association and International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders resource ‘Educational Program on Personality Disorders’ is intended to answer some important questions on the complex issue of personality disorders.

What are Personality Disorders?

The Oxford Dictionary defines personality as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character. For psychologists, personality is the individual’s distinctive pattern of perceiving, feeling, thinking, coping, and behaving. The adult personality is essentially formed by late adolescence.  Continue reading →