A personality development disorder is an inflexible and pervasive pattern of inner experience and behavior in children and adolescents, that markedly deviates from the expectations of the individual's culture.
[citation needed] Adults usually show personality patterns over a long duration of time.
This led Adam & Breithaupt-Peters (2010) to the idea that these children and adolescents need to be looked at more carefully.
The therapy which these children and adolescents need might be more intense and maybe even different from looking at the disorders traditionally.
Similar to the adult diagnosis personality disorder these children display enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior deviating markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture.
Looking at the disorder from only one perspective (e.g. (s)he had a bad childhood) often results in ignorance of important other factors or causal interactions.
Parents should be questioned separately and together with the child or adolescent to evaluate the severity and duration of the problems.
Since the problems are complex, treatment needs to affect the conditions in all impaired functional and social areas.