A Concise Guide to Personality Disorders

Clients with personality disorders (PDs) present special challenges to clinicians. Nonetheless, successful treatment is possible, and a rapidly growing research base can inform diagnosis and intervention. This book reviews what we know and what we don't know about PDs, and what this implies for clinical practice. It integrates a large body of research findings into a concise, highly practical approach to managing difficult clients. Rather than advocating a single method of treatment, Joel Paris promotes an integration of all evidence-based psychotherapies, as well as effective case management. The evidence base for pharmacotherapy is reviewed as well. Focusing particularly on borderline, antisocial, and narcissistic PDs, the author also reviews other PD categories. His extensive experience and clinical wisdom illuminate the discussion, demonstrating how to work productively and empathically with these clients.

Joel Paris , MD, PhD, was born in New York City but has spent most of his life in Canada. He earned an MD from McGill University, USA in 1964, where he also trained in psychiatry. Dr. Paris has been a member of the McGill psychiatry department since 1972, where he is a full professor and has served as department chair. Dr. Paris's research interest is in borderline personality disorder. Over the past 20 years, he has conducted research on its causes and outcome. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the author of 18 previous books. Dr. Paris is also an educator who has won awards for his teaching and is the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry .