The authors investigated the relationship between personality disorders
and treatment outcome in the National Institute of Mental Health Treatment
of Depression Collaborative Research Program, which involved 239
outpatients with major depressive disorder randomly assigned to one of four
16-week treatment conditions. Patients with personality disorders (74% of
the sample) had a significantly worse outcome in social functioning than
patients without personality disorders and were significantly more likely
to have residual symptoms of depression. There were no significant
differences in work functioning or in mean depression scores at treatment
termination. Outcome was similar for patients in the different clusters of
personality disorders.Abstract Teaser