Definition of a Personality Disorder, List of Psychological Disorders

Personality disorders are mental disorder with inflexible, enduring, maladaptive patterns of adjustment to life that cause either subjective distress or significant impairment of adaptive functioning.

The DSM-IV: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association) defines a personality disorder as an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that

• deviates markedly from the expectation of the individual's culture,
• is pervasive and inflexible,
• has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood,
• is stable over time, and
• leads to distress or impairment.