[5] Personality Disorders Flashcards
What are personality disorders?
Ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that deviate from the expectations of the culture, cause distress or problems functioning, and last over time
What are the risk factors for personality disorders?
- Low socioeconomic status
- Positive family history
- Poor parenting and parental deprivation
- Abuse during childhood - physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as neglect
What can personality disorders be divided into?
- A - Odd/eccentric
- B - Dramatic/emotional
- C - Anxious/fearful
What are the cluster A personality disorders?
- Paranoid
- Schizoid
What are the cluster B personality disorders?
- Emotionally unstable (borderline)
- Dissocial (antisocial)
- Histrionic
What are the cluster C personality disorders?
- Dependant
- Avoidant (anxious)
- Anankastic (obsessional)
What are the features of paranoid personality disorder?
- Suspicious of others
- Unforgiving
- Spouse fidelty questioned
- Perceives attack
- Envious (jealous)
- Doesn’t like criticism
- Cold affect
- Trust in others reduced
- Self-reference
What are the features of schizoid personality disorder?
- Detached (flattened) affect
- Indifferent to praise or criticism
- Sexual drive reduced
- Tasks done alone
- Absence of close friends
- No emotion
- Takes pleasure in few activities
What are the features of borderline personality disorder?
- Abandonment feared
- Mood instability
- Suicidal behaviour
- Unstable relationships
- Intense relationships
- Poor anger control
- Impulsivity
- Disturbed sense of self
- Chronic emptiness
What are the features of antisocial personality disorder?
- Callous
- Blames others
- Reckless disregard for safety
- Remorseless
- Deceitful
- Impulsive
- Temper
- Tendency to violence
What are the features of histrionic personality disorder?
- Provocative behaviour
- Concern for physical attractiveness
- Attention seeking
- Influenced easily
- Shallow
- Egocentric
- Inappropriately seductive
- Exaggerated emotions
What are the features of dependant personality disorder?
- Reassurance required
- Expressing disagreement is difficult
- Lack of self-confidence
- Initiating projects is difficult
- Abandonment feared
- Needs others to assume responsibility
- Companionship sought
- Exaggerated fears
What are the features of anxious (avoidant) personality disorder?
- Needs to be certain they are liked before getting involved with people
- Restriction of lifestyle in order to maintain security
- Inadequacy felt
- Potential for embarassment prevents involvement in new activities
- Social inhibition
What are the features of anankastic personality disorder?
- Loses point of activity due to preoccupation with detail
- Ability to compete tasks compromised due to perfectionism
- Workholic at the expense of leisure
- Fussy
- Inflexible
- Meticulous attention to detail
Stubborn
How are personality disorders investigated?
- History
- MSE
- Questionnaires, e.g. Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
- Psychological testing, e.g. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- CT/MRI head, to rule out organic causes of personality change, such as frontal lobe tumours and intracranial bleeds
