DSM-IV’s segregation of personality disorders and mental retardation on Axis II misleads patients, family members, employers, insurance companies, and even some clinicians to think of these patients as having very pervasive and permanent psychiatric conditions that are beyond the reach of psychiatric treatment.

APA should take steps to place these patients on Axis I with other psychiatric disorders, leaving Axis II for nondisorder aspects of the patient that are important to the treatment, such as character traits, defense mechanisms, cognitive styles, V codes, and other important mental findings that are not disorders in themselves.