L12 - Personality Disorders 1 Flashcards
What is the 5-factor model of personality?
- Openness: artistic, curious, wide interests
- Conscientiousness: efficient, organised, responsible, planful
- Extraversion: Outgoing, energetic, talkative
- Agreeableness: Appreciative, kind, sympathetic and trusting
- Neuroticism: anxious, tense, worrying
What is personality?
- How did you develop personality traits and how old you were when you noticed personality
- Meta-analysis conducted of 152 longitudinal studies on stability of personality traits by age and found stability increases with age, plateauing in 50s to 70s
- Personality is the set of unique traits and behaviours that characterise an individual
- Our personality influences how we engage with the world, how we develop and sustain relationship, and how we choose to spend our time
What are clinical features of personality disorders?
- Problems with identity or sense of self
- Chronic interpersonal difficulties
- The person’s enduring pattern of experience and behaviour deviates markedly from the expectations of their cultures
- Must be inflexible, pervasive across broad range of personal and social situations
- Must be stable and of long duration, onset at adolescents/early adulthood
- Causes significant distress and impairment in functioning
- Manifests in 2+ areas: cognition, affect, interpersonal functioning or impulse control
What is the cluster A clinical features of personality disorders?
- Paranoia: Suspiciousness and mistrust of others with little/no evidence: males = females
- Schizoid: Detachment from social relationships, restricted range of emotions: males > females
- Schizotypal: Cognitive =/perceptual distortions, eccentricities of behaviour/speech M>F
What is the cluster B clinical features of personality disorders? (HNAB)
- Histrionic: excessive emotionality =, attention seeking, F>M
- Narcissistic: Grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy M>F
- Antisocial: Persistent pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others M>F
- Borderline: Instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, affect, and marked impulsiveness F =M
What is the cluster C clinical features of personality disorders?
- Avoidant: Social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, hypersensitivity to negative evaluation, F>M
- Dependant: Need to be taken care of, submissive and clinging behaviour, fear of separation, F>M
- Obsessive compulsive: Preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, mental and interpersonal control, M>F
What is the relationship between age and diagnosis?
- PD diagnoses are typically made in adulthood
- Evidence of onset in adolescence/early adulthood is required
- Not all personality traits that appear in childhood will persist
Relationship between culture and diagnosis?
- Core aspects of personality are influenced by culture
- Culture influences what behaviours, norms, personality traits are acceptable
- Personality disorders must be carefully considered in the context of culture
What is the prevalence of personality disorders?
- Life prevalence rate is about 10%
- About 75% comorbidity
What are Challenges in Diagnosing and researching personality disorders?
- Diagnostic criteria are not sharply defined
- Diagnosis relies on inferred traits or consistent patterns of behaviour
- Diagnostic categories not mutually exclusive
- Personality characteristics are dimensional in nature
What is the Dimensional approach to Personality Disorders?
- Categorical systems assume mental health disorders are discrete with boundaries between normality and illness
- Dimensional systems can include: seeing symptoms as being a continuum rather than a category
- Identifying and measuring the traits that underlie PDs
- Mapping PD symptoms onto established models of personality
What are the pros of categorical approach to PDs?
- Maps onto decision to offer treatment(diagnosis = yes)
- Directs the clinical approach and appropriate treatment
- Clearer communication about condition
What are the cons of categorical approach to PDs?
- Dichotomous
- Limited support from evidence (e.g.,clusters)
- Diagnoses are heterogenous
- High amounts of comorbidity
- Poor diagnostic reliability and stability over time
What are the pros of dimensional approach to PDs?
- More reliable (across raters and time)
- Help to understand heterogeneity within disorders and lack of clear boundaries
- Information about ‘subthreshold’ traits and symptoms
What are the cons of dimensional approach to PDs?
- Hard to adopt into healthcare
- Seen as more cumbersome
- More difficult to communicate