Abstract :
Sixty-eight outpatients from a veterans’ administration psychiatry clinic and community mental
health center were assessed with 3 measures of depressive personality disorder (DPD)—the
Diagnostic Interview for Depressive Personality Disorder (Gunderson, Phillips, Triebwasser,
& Hirschfeld, 1994), the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (Huprich, Margrett,
Barthelemy, & Fine, 1996), and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM–IV Axis II Disorders
(First, Gibbon, Spitzer, Williams, & Benjamin, 1997a)—to evaluate their convergent and
discriminant validity. Evidence supporting the measures’ validity was mixed. The rate of convergence
of depressive personality diagnoses across 3 measures was less than optimal, but the
degree of intercorrelation among the measures was strong. Although depressive personality
scores had moderate levels of intercorrelations with other personality disorders, the degree of
intercorrelation decreased substantially after controlling for depressive symptoms. I conclude
that further work is needed to strengthen the validity of measures of DPD.
