Background: The assessment of personality functioning has recently become a focus of psychiatric diagnostics. The interview-based Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-2) provides a 'structure axis' for the assessment of personality functioning.
Methods: One hundred twenty-four psychiatric patients were diagnosed by means of the Structured Clinical Interviews for DSM-IV (SCID-I and SCID-II), underwent OPD-2 interviews, and completed 9 questionnaires.
Results: The OPD-2 structure axis shows good interrater reliability (intraclass correlation = 0.793). Correlations between the OPD-2 structure axis domains and a priori selected questionnaire scales were of medium size and significant. Patients with a personality disorder (PD) showed significantly worse personality functioning than those without. In cluster B PD, personality functioning was more severely impaired than in cluster C PD.
Discussion: The OPD-2 structure axis shows good reliability as well as concurrent and discriminant validity and can be recommended for clinical use and research purposes.
© 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.