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This study aimed to examine the overlaps between the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 (DSM-5) Personality Disorders (PDs) in a high-risk clinical population and to explore a transitional model for implementing DSM-5 PDs. A sample population of 982 outpatients with at least one diagnosed PD was selected from 3,075 outpatients of the Shanghai Mental Health Center. The diagnostic process comprised of a personality diagnostic questionnaire and a structured clinical interview. 685 (22.3%) patients were diagnosed with at least one of six PDs (antisocial, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive–compulsive, and schizotypal) under the alternative DSM-5 model for personality disorders proposed in Section III of the DSM-5. Nearly 20.3% of the subjects with PD met criteria for at least two PDs (of the 685 PD patients/6 PD model). Cluster and principal component analyses suggest a transitional model for the 7 specific PD categories (among the 722 PD patients, the overlapping rate was 24.1%) will be more appropriate for PD diagnosis in China. Using the simplified PD categories in the alternative DSM-5 model for personality disorders will reduce the overlaps in PD diagnoses in Chinese psychiatric practice, and should be preferred over the DSM-5 PD diagnostic system.

Objective The personality trait of neuroticism is a risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD), but this relationship has not been demonstrated in clinical samples from Asia. Methods We examined a large-scale clinical study of Chinese Han women with recurrent major depression and community-acquired controls. Results Elevated levels of neuroticism increased the risk for lifetime MDD (with an odds ratio of 1.37 per SD), contributed to the comorbidity of MDD with anxiety disorders, and predicted the onset and severity of MDD. Our findings largely replicate those obtained in clinical populations in Europe and US but differ in two ways: we did not find a relationship between melancholia and neuroticism; we found lower mean scores for neuroticism (3.6 in our community control sample). Limitations Our findings do not apply to MDD in community-acquired samples and may be limited to Han Chinese women. It is not possible to determine whether the association between neuroticism and MDD reflects a causal relationship. Conclusions Neuroticism acts as a risk factor for MDD in Chinese women, as it does in the West and may particularly predispose to comorbidity with anxiety disorders. Cultural factors may have an important effect on its measurement.