Explain why the epidemiological, gender, race, and ethnicity data on personality disorders should be interpreted cautiously

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There are few epidemiological data on the prevalence of personality disorders. One reason is that personality disorders cannot be reliably diagnosed in a single setting. Since the design of most epidemiological studies is based on single diagnostic interviews and a series of self-report questionnaires, it is hard to get an accurate, reliable picture of these disorders.
With regard to gender differences, most of the data comes from epidemiological studies and studies of clinical populations. Gender differences reported from clinical populations can be biased and may reflect the likelihood of the different sexes to seek treatment rather than true sex differences. Also, prevalence rates for personality disorders vary depending on which type of study is used. For example, in epidemiological studies, antisocial personality disorder is more common in men while dependent and avoidant personality disorders are more common in women. However, in clinical population studies, men are most often diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder while women are diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder.
There are no adequate large-scale culturally sensitive studies to date that can adequately describe either prevalence or differences in clinical symptoms of personality disorders among the various races or ethnicities.