8. Personality Disorders Flashcards
What is Personality?
Individual Differences in Characteristic Patterns of Thinking / Feeling / Behaving. Studies look at:
- Understanding the Individual Differences in Particular Personality Characteristics
- Understanding how the Various Parts if a Person come together as a Whole
What are the ICD-10 Types of Personality Disorder?
- Paranoid Personality Disorder
- Schizoid Personality Disorder
- Dissocial (Antisocial) Personality Disorder
- Emotionally Unstable (Borderline) Personality Disorder
- Histrionic Personality Disorder
- Anankastic (Obsessive-Compulsive) Personality Disorder
- Anxious (Avoidant) Personality Disorder
- Dependent Personality Disorder
What are the Features of Paranoid Personality Disorder?
- Excessive Sensitiveness to Setbacks / Rebuffs
- Persistently Bears Grudges
- Suspicious, Misconstrues actions as Hostile
- Combative, Tenacious Sense of Personal Rights
- Suspicious Regarding Fidelity of Partner
- Excesive Self-Importance
- Conspiratorial Explanations of Events
What are the Features of Schizoid Personality Disorder?
- Social Detachment
- Emotional Coldness, Detachment
- Few Activities Pleasurable
- Limited Capacity to Express Feelings
- Indifference to Praise / Criticism
- Little Interest in Sexual Experiences
- Preoccupation with Fantasy and Introspection
- Lack of Desire for close friends / confiding relationships
What are the Features of Dissocial (Antisocial) Personality Disorder?
- Callous Unconcern for Feelings of Others
- Gross / Persistent Irresponsibility
- Incapacity to Maintain Enduring Relationships
- Low Tolerance to Frustration
- Low Threshold for Violence / Aggression
- Incapacity to Feel Guilt
- Blames Others
What is the name of the Severe form of Dissocial (Antisocial) Personality Disorder?
Psychopathy. Characterised by:
- Antisocial Behaviour
- Callous Disregard
- Lack of Ampathy
What are the 2 Types / Features of Emotionally Unstable (Borderline) Personality Disorder?
- Impulsive Type:
- a) Emotional Instability and Lack of Control
- b) Outbusrts of Violence / Threatening Behaviour
- Borderline Type:
- a) Emotional Instability
- b) Self-Image (Aims / Internal Preferences) Unclear
- c) Chronic Feelings of Emptiness / Suicidal
- d) Intense Unstable Relationships
- e) Efforts to Avoid Abandonment
What are the Features of Histrionic Personality Disorder?
- Self-Dramatisation - Theatricality
- Suggestibility
- Shallow and Liable Affect
- Seeks Excitement - Centre of Attention
- Inappropriate Seductiveness
- Over concern with Physical Attractiveness
What are the Features of Anankastic (Obsessive-Compulsive) Personality Disorder?
- Preoccupation with Details / Rules / Lists / Order
- Perfectionism interferes with task completion
- Conscientiousness / Scrupulousness / Undue Preoccupation with Productivity
- Pedantic, Rigid and Stubborn
- Insists other submit
- Insistent Thought or Impulses
What are the Features of Anxious (Avoidant) Personality Disorder?
- Persistent, Pervasive Tensions and Apprehension
- Believe they are Socially Inept / Inferior to others
- Preoccupation with being Criticized / Rejected
- Fear of Criticism / Disapproval / Rejection
- Restriction in Lifestyle because of need for security
What are the Features of Dependent Personality Disorder?
- Allows other to make important life decisions
- Subordination of own needs
- Unwillingness to make a Demand
- Fear of Abandonment
- Uncomfortable / Helpless when Alone
- Unable to make Descisions
- Fear inability to care for themselves
How is a Diagnosis of Personality Disorders made?
Clinical - Importance of History Taking (use structured Interviews)
What is the Aetiology of Personality Disorders?
- Genetics - in particular Borderline Personality Disorder
- Early Trauma - Physical / Sexual / Verbal Abuse
- Non-Trauma - Emotionality / Negative Affectivity / Affective Instability / Emotional Dysregulation
In Emotionally Unstable (Borderline) Personality Disorder, where might Neuroanatomical Changes occur?
- Frontal - Subcortical Region
- Temporal Limbic Region
Note - this can be confirmed with Neuroimaging
What is the Rationale for Pharmacotherapy for Personality Disorders?
- Pharmacotherapy directly influences Personality Disorders
- Pharmacotherapy exerts an effect over Core / Nuclear Symptom Clusters
- Pharmacotherapy Exerts its Therapeutic Effects by treating Comorbid Axis I Disorders
What are the Different Therapeutic Options for Personality Disorders?
- Pharmacotherapy
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Mentalisation Based Therapy (MBT)
What is Mentalizing (In Mentalisation Based Therapy)?
The process by which we make sense of each other and ourselves, implicitly and explicitly, in terms of subjective states and intentional varied mental processes.
