The age of onset of personality disorders

Abstract

Personality disorder occurs when an individual’s personality structure prevents them from achieving adaptive solutions to universal life tasks. Although increases in maladaptive personality traits can be observed during childhood, clinically significant personality disorder usually appears during the transition between childhood and adulthood, when individuals become emotionally, socially, and cognitively prepared for the developmental task of integrating knowledge and experience about themselves and others into a coherent whole. Childhood and adolescent traits across the normal-abnormal range show continuity with those in adulthood, but traits remain dynamic across the lifespan. The dimensi..