Abstract
Objective: Prevalence of personality disorders have been reported as 10-13% in general population, 30-50% in psychiatric patients, and 15% in psychiatric outpatients. The most common personality disorders are respectively borderline, antisocial, schizotypal, and avoidant. There has been no specific pharmacological approach for the treatment of personality disorders that have different clinical features with various co-morbid psychiatric disorders. The aim of this report is to review the efficacy of psychotropic medications used for the treatment of personality disorders.

Methods: By using “borderline, antisocial, schizotypal, narcissistic, obsessive compulsive, avoidant personality, and pharmacotherapy” as keywords at the Pubmed database we primarily searched for the double blind, placebo controlled, randomized trials and also included some of the open label trials.

Results: Most of the research on this topic was on pharmacotherapy of borderline personality disorder. Polypharmacy, that has been used widely in treatment of these cases, has been reported ineffective in most of the patients. The antidepressants have been replaced by mood stabilizers. The antidepressants and mood stabilizers have been reported to decrease mood symptoms like anger, depression, dysphoria, and to enhance adherence to psychotherapy. The most effective mood stabilizer was divalproex. The antipsychotics have been recommended to be used at psychotic and behavioral symptomatology. At the treatment of antisocial personality disorder CBT is recommended and there was no evidence based pharmacotherapy. In the treatment of schizotypal personality disorder, the antipsychotics have been reported effective. Pergolide and guanfacine have been reported to be useful in the treatment of cognitive disorders. The first line treatment options of avoidant personality disorder are venlafaxine and SSRIs.

Conclusions: Most of the studies in literature have been focused at borderline personality disorder that has been difficult to treat. According to the guidelines, psychotherapy is the first line treatment for personality disorders. Pharmacotherapy has been reported to increase the efficiency of psychotherapy in BPD which presents with various symptoms of mood, cognition, and behavior. The studies in the literature report that Polypharmacy is not useful for these patients contrary to the popular belief. The research about other personality disorders is limited. More clear understanding of etiopathogenesis of personality disorders; would be helpful in development of more effective pharmacological agents in their treatment.

Key words: personality disorders, pharmacotherapy, borderline personality disorder