Personality features related to generalized anxiety disorder.

Forty-six patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) without any other coexisting axis I diagnoses were compared with 50 control subjects for assessment on axis II. No specific personality disorder (PD) was found to be significantly associated with chronic anxiety, although the majority of anxious patients showed significantly more maladaptative traits than controls. Discriminant analysis selected a list of items able to provide a correct classification rate of 91% based on personality features selected in canonical function. Factor analysis indicated that personality characteristics of expectation of damage were more closely related to GAD in our sample.