Personality Disorders - Search Results
As literature-searching is an essential strategy of any systematic review, a number of sources were used to facilitate the literature searching process. First, a dictionary of the ICD-10 and DSM-IV Personality Disorder criteria and their diagnostic category was developed. Secondly, following several consultations a search-string was formulated and presented at the forum for feedback. The search string adopted was:
“(personality disorder) and (Axis II or epidemiological or population or cohort study) and (prevalence or incidence) not animal”, using keywords for the period, 1980 to 2007.
A search was then conducted using the electronic databases: Medline, Psychinfo and Embase. This was supplemented by hand searching journals and cross-referencing, books and other journals. In addition various government departments and agencies, including but not limited to:
- World Health Organization (WHO) Burden of Disease Project
- Harvard School of Public Health Burden of Disease Unit
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW)
- Burden of Disease and Injury in Australia
- Victorian Burden of Disease Study
- Queensland Burden of Disease and Injury
- University of Queensland - School of Population Helath Centre for Burden of Disease and Cost-effectiveness
- Burden of Disease and Injury in New Zealand
- Australian Bureau of Statistics
- World Mental Health Survey Initiative
Table 1: Number of articles retrieved using search-string
| Sources | N |
| Medline (via Ovid) | 692 |
| Psychinfo (via CSA) | 5722 |
| Embase | 1,342 |
| All studies from electronic databases | 7,756 |
Following removal of duplicates in the first phase and culling articles that did not meet the inclusion criterion in the second phase. Some 50 potential articles were available for further investigation. From these, only eight large-scale epidemiological studies were identified, all conducted within developed countries. Hence only limited data was found for the epidemiology of personality disorders, with particular concern surrounding lack of data for developing countries.