ICD-11 personality disorder features in the danish general population: Cut-offs and prevalence rates for severity levels

Introduction: Prevalence rates and correlates of personality disorders (PD) are relevant to health care policy and planning.

Objectives: To present normative data for self-reported ICD-11 personality disorder (PD) features including tentative cut-off scores and prevalence rates for severity levels along with psychosocial correlates.

Methods: The Personality Disorder Severity ICD-11 (PDS-ICD-11) scale and criterion measures of impairment were administered to a social-demographically stratified sample of Danish citizens (N = 8,941) of which 3,044 delivered complete data. Item-Response Theory (IRT) was employed to indicate cut-offs based on standard deviations from the latent mean.

Results: The unidimensionality of the PDS-ICD-11 score was supported and IRT analysis suggested norm-based thresholds at latent severity levels. Expected associations with criterion measures were found.

Conclusion: The normative data portray ICD-11 PD features in the general population and allow for interpretation of PDS-ICD-11 scores (e.g., scores of 12, 16, and 19 may indicate mild, moderate, and severe dysfunction), which may inform health care policy and planning. A total weighted prevalence of 6.9 % of the Danish general population is estimated to have clinically significant personality dysfunction, proportionally composed of Mild (4.8 %), Moderate (1.2 %), and Severe (0.9 %) levels. Future research should corroborate these findings using relevant clinical samples and methods.