Challenges and Developments in the Assessment of (Mal)adaptive Personality and Pathological States in Older Adults

Abstract

Since older adults often show an atypical presentation of (mal)adaptive personality traits and pathological states, the articles in this special issue will concisely discuss some perennial issues in clinical assessment in older adults and thus outline the main challenges this domain faces. By bringing empirical work and meta-analytic studies from leading scholars in the field of geropsychology, the articles will also address these challenges by reporting the latest developments in the field. This way, we hope to reshape the way clinicians and researchers assess (mal)adaptive personality and pathological states in older adults into a more reliable and valid assessment method that integrates the specific biopsychosocial context of older age.

Keywords

older adults assessment (mal)adaptive personality pathological states

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Blanchard-Fields

Mienaltowsky

Seay

R. B.

(2007). Age differences in everyday problem-solving effectiveness: Older adults select more effective strategies for interpersonal problems. Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 62(1), P61-P64.

Balsis

Gleason

M. E. J.

Woods

C. M.

Oltmanns

T. F.

(2007). An item response theory analysis of DSM-IV personality disorder criteria across younger and older age groups. Psychology and Aging, 22, 171-185.

Barnes

D. E.

Yaffe

(2011). The projected effect of risk factor reduction on Alzheimer’s disease prevalence. Lancet Neurology, 10, 819-828.

Brooks

L. G.

Loewenstein

D. A.

(2010). Assessing the progression of mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease: Current trends and future directions. Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, 2(5), 28. doi:10.1186/alzrt52. Retrieved from http://alzres.com/content/2/5/28

Carstensen

L. L.

Mikels

J. A.

(2005). At the intersection of emotion and cognition. Aging and the positivity effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 117-121. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00348.x

Cervone

Mischel

(2002). Personality science. In Cervone

Mischel

(Eds.), Advances in personality science (pp. 1-26). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Consedine

Magai

Bonanno

(2002). Moderators of the emotion inhibition-health relationship: A review and research agenda. Review of General Psychology, 6, 204-228.

10.

Costa

P. T.

Jr. Widiger

T. A.

(2001). Personality disorders and the five-factor model of personality (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

11.

Debast

van Alphen

S. P. J.

Rossi

Tummers

J. H. A.

Bolwerk

Derksen

J. J. L.

Rosowsky

(2014). Personality traits and personality disorders in late middle and old age: Do they remain stable? A literature review. Clinical Gerontologist, 37, 253-271.

12.

Derogatis

L. R.

(1994). Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems.

13.

Donnellan

M. B.

Robins

R. W.

(2009). The development of personality across the life span. In Corr

P. J.

Matthews

(Eds.), Cambridge handbook of personality (pp. 191-204). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

14.

Edelstein

Woodhead

E. L.

Segal

D. L.

Heisel

M. J.

Bower

E. H.

Lowery

A. J.

Stobner

S. A.

(2008). Older adults psychological assessment: Current instrument status and related considerations. Clinical Gerontologist, 31(3), 1-35.

15.

English

Carstensen

L. L.

(2014). Emotional experience in the mornings and the evenings: Consideration of age differences in specific emotions by time of day. Frontier in Psychology, 5, 185. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00185

16.

Escobar

J. I.

Cook

Chen

C. N.

Gara

M. A.

Alegría

Interian

Diaz

(2010). Whether medically unexplained or not, three or more concurrent somatic symptoms predict psychopathology and service use in community populations. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 69, 1-8.

17.

Flicker

Ferris

S. H.

Reisberg

(1991). Mild cognitive impairment in the elderly: Predictors of dementia. Neurology, 41, 1006-1006. doi:10.1212/WNL.41.7.1006

18.

Hegeman

J. H.

de Waal

M. W.

Comijs

H. C.

Kok

R. M.

van der Mast

R. C.

(2015). Depression in later life: A more somatic presentation? Journal of Affective Disorders, 170, 196-202. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2014.08.032

19.

Jazaieri

Urry

H. L.

Gross

J. J.

(2013). Affective disturbance and psychopathology: An emotion regulation perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 4, 584-599. http://dx.doi.org/10.5127/jep.030312

20.

Jonassaint

C. R.

Why

Y. P.

Bishop

G. D.

Tong

E. M.

Diong

S. M.

Enkelmann

H. C.

. . . Ang

(2009). The effects of neuroticism and extraversion on cardiovascular reactivity during a mental and an emotional stress task. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 74, 274-279.

21.

Kroenke

Spitzer

R. L.

Williams

J. B. W.

(2002). The PHQ-15: Validity of a new measure for evaluating the severity of somatic symptoms. Psychosomatic Medicine, 64, 258-266.

22.

Krueger

R. F.

Eaton

N. R.

Clark

L. A.

Watson

Markon

K. E.

Derringer

. . . Livesley

(2011). Deriving an empirical structure of personality pathology for DSM-5. Journal of Personality Disorders, 25, 170-191.

23.

Krueger

R. F.

Eaton

N. R.

Derringer

Markon

K. E.

Watson

Skodol

A. E.

(2011). Personality in DSM-5: Helping delineate personality disorder content and framing the metastructure, Journal of Personality Assessment, 93, 325-331. doi:10.1080/00223891.2011.577478

24.

Kunzmann

Grühn

(2005). Age differences in emotional reactivity: The sample case of sadness. Psychology and Aging, 20, 47-59.

25.

Lucas

R. E.

Donnellan

M. B.

(2011). Personality development across the life span: Longitudinal analyses with a national sample from Germany. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 847-861. doi:10.1037/a0024298

26.

Mitchell

A. J.

Beaumont

Ferguson

Yadegarfar

Stubbs

(2014). Risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment in older people with subjective memory complaints: Meta-analysis. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 130, 439-451. doi:10.1111/acps.12336

27.

Morris

J. C.

(2006). Mild cognitive impairment is early-stage Alzheimer disease: Time to revise diagnostic criteria. Archives of Neurology, 63, 15-16. doi:10.1001/archneur.63.1.15

28.

Oltmanns

T. F.

Rodrigues

M. M.

Weinstein

Gleason

M. E. J.

(2014). Prevalence of personality disorders at midlife in a community sample: Disorders and symptoms reflected in interview, self, and informant reports. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 36, 177-188.

29.

Orth

Trzesniewsky

K. H.

Robins

R. W.

(2010). Self-esteem development is a risk factor for depressive symptoms from young adulthood to old age: A cohort-sequential longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 645-658. doi:10.1037/a0018769

30.

Petersen

R. C.

Smith

G. E.

Waring

S. C.

Ivnik

R. J.

Tangalos

E. G.

Kokmen

(1999). Mild cognitive impairment. Archives of Neurology, 56, 303-308.

31.

Reed

A. E.

Chan

Mikels

J. A.

(2014). Meta-analysis of the age-related positivity effect: Age differences in preferences for positive over negative information. Psychology and Aging, 29, 1-15. doi:10.1037/a0035194

32.

Remue

Hughes

De Houwer

De Raedt

(2014). To be or want to be: Disentangling the role of actual versus ideal self in implicit self-esteem. PLoS One, 9(9), e108837. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108837

33.

Rossi

Van den Broeck

Dierckx

Segal

van Alphen

S. P. J.

(2014). Personality assessment among older adults: The value of personality questionnaires unraveled. Aging and Mental Health, 18, 936-940. doi:10.1080/13607863.2014.924089

34.

Scarmeas

Stern

(2004). Cognitive reserve: Implications for diagnosis and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Current Neurology Neuroscience Reports, 4, 374-380.

35.

Scheibe

Carstensen

L. L.

(2010). Emotional aging: Recent findings and future trends. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 65, 135-144.

36.

Terraciano

Sutin

A. R.

O’Brien

R. J.

Ferrucci

Zonderman

A. B.

Resnick

(2014). Personality and risk of Alzheimer’s disease: New data and meta-analysis. Alzheimer’s and Dementia, 10, 179-186, doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2013.03.002

37.

Trzesniewski

K. H.

Donnellan

M. B.

Robins

R. W.

(2003). Stability of self-esteem across the lifespan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 205-220.

38.

Tsai

J. L.

Levenson

R. W.

Carstensen

L. L.

(2000). Autonomic, subjective, and expressive responses to emotional films in older and younger Chinese Americans and European Americans. Psychology and Aging, 15, 684-693.

39.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2015). World population aging 2015 (ST/ESA/SER.A/390). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2015_Report.pdf

40.

van Alphen

S. P. J.

Bolwerk

Videler

A. C.

Tummers

J. H. A.

Van Royen

R. J. J.

Barendse

H. P. J.

. . . Rosowsky

. (2012). Age related aspects and clinical implementations of diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders in older adults. Clinical Gerontologist, 1, 27-41.

41.

Wijeratne

(2011). Somatization in older people. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 34, 661-671.