Are physical activity and nutrition linked to personality disorders? Health habits and personality disorders: A scoping review.

Abstract

Individuals with personality disorders (PDs) have a decreased life expectancy compared with the general population in part due to physical illnesses. Many hypotheses have been suggested to explain those physical illnesses such as hormone imbalance, medication, lack of physical activity, and unhealthy diet. However, little is known about the relation between lifestyle and PDs. The purpose of this scoping review is to regroup the available information on this topic. We searched the literature up to February 2021 using four databases and found 21 articles analyzing the relation between lifestyle and PDs in observational studies including 153,081 participants from diverse populations going from general population to adults in psychiatric care. Most studies used measures of lifestyle as control variables or did not use lifestyle variables at all. Moreover, the instruments used to measure lifestyle variables lacked precision at best. Two studies demonstrated a relation between early malnutrition and further development of PDs, but those results may be influenced by confounding variables and cannot indicate a clear link between nutrition and personality disorder. The lack of solid evidence we observed is surprising, considering the multiple benefits individuals with PDs could get from a healthy lifestyle. More studies are needed to thoroughly analyze the impact of lifestyle on PDs and vice versa.