Editorial

Abstract

The field of personality disorder (PD) treatment, research, service investment and overall development is moving through a potentially turbulent action phase with the development of revised diagnostic classifications in both DSM and ICD. The papers in this special edition have the DSM-5 revisions as their focus, but the issues and questions they raise can as easily be applied to the work on ICD-11. This special edition was prompted by an international seminar convened in London on June 2010 by the Personality Disorder Institute, University of Nottingham. It had the express purpose of not only examining the key scientific drivers behind the revisions but also the extent to which the process of revision stood up when examined through the lens of a wider suite of academic disciplines. In this edition, only a sample of these perspectives can be presented, but they should provide food for thought and further debate amongst those engaged in the revision process and those who will have to work with their consequences as service users, carers, clinicians, lawyers, policymakers and researchers. A series of themes emerge from the papers, which should at least give pause for thought in the continuing process of developing the revisions to the classification system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)