Chapter 17 - Personality, Mental Health and Physical Health Flashcards
Define personality disorders
Patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour beyond the normal range of psychological variation
- personality disorders are deviations from socially desirable traits
What is the problem with classifying someone as “abnormal” or “normal”?
There is not an exact point that differentiates between normal and disordered personality
- there isn’t a clear line between “healthy” and “abnormal”, it’s a continuum
What was the controversy with the old DSM versions?
They were categorical; there was a checklist of symptoms
- didn’t talk about severity at all
How did the newest version of the DSM try to solve the controversy?
By making it both categorical and creating a continuum
What two purposes did creating a dual approach theory to the DSM serve?
- make diagnosis more objective (ensures common terminology for describing problems)
- insurance billing - compensation for treatment requires a diagnosis from the DSM
- can help solve this by including NOS (not otherwise specified) in the diagnosis
What are the hallmark features of a personality disorder?
- Problematic for the person or for others
- affect social relationships and interactions
- difficult to change with therapy or other means - are stable over time
What does ego-syntonic mean?
Symptoms are seen as normal and valued aspects of personality
- they think others are the ones with the problem
Describe the old system of diagnosing personality disorders, which used the old DSM?
- 10 major personality disorders categorized into 3 clusters:
1. Cluster A - odd and eccentric patterns of thinking, paranoid
2. Cluster B - Impulsive and erratic patterns of behaviour
3. Cluster C - anxious and avoidant emotional styles
How is the new DSM system of classification different from the old one?
- no clusters (they were useless and overlapped)
- now 6 major disorders
Describe schizotypal personality disorder?
- extremely odd thoughts, strange ideas, unconventional behaviour, superstitious beliefs, difficulty in close relationships
- could resemble schizophrenia in extreme cases
- 0.6-4.6% prevalence
Describe narcissistic personality disorder?
- belief that one is superior, even if there is evidence to prove that they are not
- feeling of entitlement
- lack of empathy
- very difficult to treat because it’s unlikely they will seek help
Describe antisocial personality disorder
- impulsive
- reckless
- illegal behaviours such as vandalism, theft and drug dealing
- irritable and aggressive
- unconcerned with how their behaviours impact others
Describe avoidant personality disorder
- they expect the worst from others (that they aren’t going to treat them well and aren’t going to love them)
- fear of failure or rejection leads them to avoid normal activities
- need for reassurance and sensitive to criticism
- active inhibition of emotional expression
- deep cravings for social acceptance but because of fear of rejection they withdraw and don’t express emotions > other people don’t know how to respond to them socially > this affirms their negative expectations of people
Describe obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
- they are bound by rituals and rules (if these are broken, something bad will happen)
- can be workaholics (working long hours but are unproductive)
- can have difficulty throwing things away
- can be ego syntonic
Describe borderline personality disorder
- most severe personality disorder
- emotional instability
- suicide attempts
- self-mutilation
- identity crises
- turbulent relationships
- see people as all good or all bad, and these can apply to the same person on different days (why it’s so confusing being their friend)
- treatment with dialectical behavioural therapy, which teaches them control over emotions
