The health status, mortality and service use of people with personality disorder in South East London

Abstract

The overall aim of this thesis was to improve the knowledge of the public health
burden of personality disorders in South East London, specifically as this relates to the health and mortality of individuals with personality disorders. An additional aim was to enhance the knowledge of the psychiatric service use of people with personality disorders in South East London.
This thesis addresses the above aims by focusing on four specific objectives. Each objective formed the basis of a discrete study.
1. To establish the life expectancy and all-cause mortality among secondary
care patients with personality disorder
2. To establish the clinical predictors of all-cause and cause-specific mortality
among secondary care patients with personality disorder
3. To establish the impact of co-morbid personality disorder on the service use
of people with severe mental illness within secondary mental healthcare.
4. To use the SAPAS in order to examine the association between personality
disorder screen status and general health in a local community sample
The thesis opens with an introduction chapter, Chapter 1, covering the relevant
background literature – definition, classification and assessment of personality
disorder. The current literature on epidemiology of personality disorder, in particular on health, mortality, costs and service use of people with personality disorder, is further expounded. Next, the chapter outlines the aims and objectives of the thesis, the sources of data used and my contribution to the work. In Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, the four studies, corresponding to the four defined objectives, are presented in the form of published manuscripts. Chapter 6, the final chapter, presents a discussion of the findings, methodological considerations, implications for clinical practice and future research, and conclusions. The References section at the end of the thesis
includes all bibliographic references from the Introduction (Chapter 1) and the
Discussion (Chapter 6).

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Richard Hayes (Supervisor), Robert Stewart (Supervisor) & Paul Moran (Supervisor)