Just pointing out that most Personality Disorders are comorbid----they co-exist. So JA could have a primary diagnosis of BPD with traits that will flair up of NPD, or HPD, or ASPD. ykwim?
A new DSM V will never change her diagnosis or be grounds for an appeal.
The National Institute of Mental Health views the DSM (any version) as merely a "field guide" for diagnosis of mental illness. It lists criteria for specific disease entities, but the degree of overlap is so great that their recommendation is that clinicians move away from the DSM (again, using it only as a birdwatcher would use a dichotomous key in a field guide to RULE OUT certain disorders), and then focus on the specific traits of the individual, how s/he feels and behaves, to home in on a more specific diagnosis.
I have lived with three people with personality disorders. ALL of them had significant comorbidities: two have serious addictions, depression, AND significant overlap with personality disorders that are not their primary diagnoses; one has STRONG traits of THREE personality disorders, plus dysthymia (on a good day) and major depression (most of the time).
Just as a diabetic patient may develop atherosclerosis and therefore (a) have myocardial infarction; (b) experience damage to the blood vessels of the eyes, resulting in vision impairment or blindness, and (c) lose a limb because of reduced blood flow, so can the personality-disordered patient have MANY mental health consequences that spring from (or exist independently from) his/her primary diagnosis.
That Jodi Arias has been diagnosed with BPD does not in ANY way preclude any other psychiatric diagnosis.
Except psychosis. It has been firmly established that she WAS NOT psychotic when she killed Travis Alexander. And really, that is the ONLY diagnosis that is relevant in this matter. The rest is just interesting to those of us who are interested in the workings of the human mind.
ETA: The new DSM does NOT make changes in personality disorder classification/definition. Initially, there were plans to make changes, but it was decided that, because concretely objective tests are not available to assess for some of the specific PDs yet, the mental health community is better-served by maintaining the current criteria.
Personality disorders:
DSM-5 will maintain the categorical model and criteria for the 10 personality disorders included in DSM-IV and will include the new trait-specific methodology in a separate area of Section 3 to encourage further study how this could be used to diagnose personality disorders in clinical practice.
(Just a snippet from
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archiv...approved-by-american-psychiatric-association/)