Behavioral Disorders - Personality Disorders, Dissociative Disorders, Schizophrenia Spectrum

Question 1

Borderline Personality Disorder - Levels of Symptoms (3)

Answer 1

1. Regulatory: extreme reactions to social situations, mood swings, persistent feeling of boredom.
2. Impulsive behavior: unstable self image, substance abuse, suicidal.
3. Interpersonal relations: idealistic relations, swinging between extremes.

Question 2

Borderline Personality Disorder - DSM5 Criteria

Answer 2

Frantic effort to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships.
Unstable self image
Self-damaging impulsivity
Chronic feeling of emptiness
Inappropriate anger, difficult to control.
Paranoid feelings.

Question 3

Borderline Personality Disorder - Treatment (3)

Answer 3

Cognitive behavioral therapy (helpful!)
psychological treatment (not helpful)
Nutritional supplements

Question 4

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Definition

Answer 4

Personality Disorder.
Repetition of an idea or action, that must compulsively be executed. If not: can experience signs of panic attack, somatic symptoms.

Question 5

OCD Treatment (3)

Answer 5

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Aerobic exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy
Self care therapies, task-oriented training.

Question 6

Paranoid Personality Disorder - Definition and Signs

Answer 6

Distrust of others, malevolent intensions. Usually males, early adulthood.
- Solitariness (lonely)
- Poor peer relationships
- Social anxiety
- Underachievement in school
- Hypersensitivity
- Peculiar thoughts and idiosyncratic fantasies (develop into delusions)

Question 7

Paranoid Personality Disorder -
DSM5 Criteria

Answer 7

Suspicion that others are exploiting, harming or deceiving without sufficient basis.
Belied that confidential info will be maliciously used.
Hidden meaning behind everything said to them.
Persistent grudges.
Question fidelity of partners.

Question 8

Schizoid Personality Disorder - Definition

Answer 8

Social detachment, limited range of emotions. Great difficulty expressing anger. Barely able to release oxytocin, not able to create attachment to anything or anyone (including self).

Question 9

Schizoid Personality Disorder - DSM5 Criteria

Answer 9

No desire or enjoyment for close relationships.
Looks for solitary activity.
Low interest in sexual relations.
Takes pleasure in few, if any activity
Lack of close friends
Indifference to criticism.
Emotional coldness, detachment, flatted affectivity.

Question 10

Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Definition, DSM5 Criteria

Answer 10

Grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy, beginning in early adulthood.
- Fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, ideal relationships.
- Belief of being special and unique.
- Requires excessive admiration and attention.
- Sense of entitlement, expects favorable treatment and automatic compliance.
- Exploitative behavior, lack of empathy, arrogance.

Question 11

General Subtypes of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (4)

Answer 11

• Grandiose or classic: arrogant, seeking constant validation, comparing themselves with others.
• Malignin: similar to grandiose, impulses to harm others to place themselves better in a context.
• Covert: passive-aggressive, victimizing themselves, blaming others.
• Communal: Seek approval over all things, by engaging in community. Helping others to feel better about myself.

Question 12

Dissociative Disorders - Definition

Answer 12

Natural psychological way of coping with situation that could overload the CNS. Create memory engrams, that allow them to exist in an alternative reality.

Question 13

Dissociative Identity Disorder - Definition, DSM5 Criteria

Answer 13

Disruption of core identity, not attributed to substance abuse or other medical condition. Faced with trauma in childhood, created another identity to deal with it. Usually 3.
- Discontinuity in sense of self.
- Alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory and perception.
- Recurrent gaps in recall of daily events.

Question 14

Dissociative Amnesia - Definition, Divisions (2)

Answer 14

Inability to recall relevant autobiographical information, usually traumatic. Not PTSS, DID or meds.
- Systematized amnesia: loss of memory for a specific category.
- Conscious amnesia: loss of memory of each new event, as they occur.

Question 15

Depersonalization and Derealization Disorder - Definition

Answer 15

Depersonalization: I don’t realize myself being me.
Derealization: I know who I am, but environment, other people, feel unreal.

Question 16

Schizophrenia Spectrum - Definition and Characteristics

Answer 16

Chronic disease of CNS, behavioral, cognitive and speech impairment symptoms.
Female: 20-35 yr.
Male: 15-25 yr.

Question 17

Schizophrenia Spectrum - Negative and Positive Symptoms

Answer 17

Negative:
- Lack of drive or initiative
- Social withdrawal
- Apathy
- Depression
- Flat affection
- Monotone communication
Positive:
- Hallucinations
- Delusion
- Agitation
- Disorganized thinking
- Abnormal motor behavior

Question 18

Hallucinations - Definition

Answer 18

Involuntary perceptual experiences, without external stimuli. Mostly auditory, in worst case visual, created by the amygdala.

Question 19

Delusions - Definition and Division (5)

Answer 19

Fixed beliefs, unable to be changed under conflicting evidence.
- Persecutory delusion: someone is trying to harm them.
- Referential delusion: idea that certain gestures/signs are directed at them.
- Grandiose delusion: exceptional abilities, wealth or fame.
- Erotomaniac delusion: false belief that someone is in love with them.
- Nihilistic delusion: major catastrophe is about to happen.

Question 20

Disorganized Thinking

Answer 20

Sentences often not connected because they are trying to pick pieces out of the racing thoughts.
Switching from one topic to another.
Answers to questions may not be unrelated or obliquely related.

Question 21

Abnormal Motor Behavior

Answer 21

Childlike silliness to unpredictable agitation. Decrease in reactivity, maintaining a rigid/bizarre posture or non-functional excessive motor activity. Staring, grimacing and echoing of speech.

Question 22

Schizophrenia Spectrum - Treatment

Answer 22

Pharmacological: most used but not very effective.
Psychoeducation: increase knowledge of disease
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Negative symptoms usually do not respond to pharmacological treatment, physical activity.