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Pharmacotherapy of Personality Disorders

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NeuroPsychopharmacotherapy

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Abstract

Personality disorders (PD) represent a group of more than 10 disorders, depending on the diagnostic classification used, but most research on pharmacological treatments deals with borderline PD. International guidelines consider the evidence for the usefulness of psychopharmacotherapy for PD limited and therefore, their major recommendation is to center this therapeutic approach for the treatment of the frequent psychiatric comorbidities. Indeed, current evidence favors psychotherapy compared to psychopharmacotherapy in the treatment of personality disorders (PD). However, antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, anti-convulsants, and other psychotropic drugs are widely used, very frequently as combination treatments, despite not any of them has been introduced by national drug authorities for this indication. Previous studies are based on the use of diagnostic systems which changed over the past decades, and this explains the difficulty to compare pharmacological studies. The present situation is characterized by a transition from a categorical to a more dimensional classification, and to a hybrid model. Future research in this field will have to consider the new classification of PD and hopefully, yield evidence for efficacity of both old and new drugs in development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Pierre Baumann

  2. Department of General Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Sabine C. Herpertz

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  1. Pierre Baumann
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  2. Sabine C. Herpertz
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Correspondence to Pierre Baumann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Clinic and Policlinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Peter Riederer

  2. Institute of Psychological Medicine (IPM), Soyen, Germany

    Gerd Laux

  3. Centre for Research Promotion and Support, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan

    Toshiharu Nagatsu

  4. Center Translational Res Neurol Diseases, Dalian Med Uni Shanghai Inst Health Sc Center Translational Res Neurol Diseases, Dalian, China

    Weidong Le

  5. Würzburg, Germany

    Christian Riederer

Section Editor information

  1. Brain and Mind Centre and School of Medical Sciences (Neuroscience), Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Peter Riederer

  2. Center for Research Promotion and Support, Fujita Health University School of Medicine, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan

    Toshiharu Nagatsu

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Baumann, P., Herpertz, S.C. (2022). Pharmacotherapy of Personality Disorders. In: Riederer, P., Laux, G., Nagatsu, T., Le, W., Riederer, C. (eds) NeuroPsychopharmacotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62059-2_252

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62059-2_252

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