Personality Disorders

The so-called personality disorder diagnosis is the darling of the VA. A personality disorder is not a recognized disability in the VA system. The military physicians know that, and thus they frequently diagnose mental problems arising during service as personality disorders. For example, when a soldier’s behavior becomes erratic or abnormal (often early signs of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder), military physicians typically give a perfunctory diagnosis of personality disorder in the separation examination. It is important that the claimant’s representative does not accept this diagnosis at face value. Rather, a private psychiatric evaluation is usually needed to determine whether the veteran’s alleged personality disorder was, in fact, the first symptoms of a true psychiatric disability during service.