Personality Disorder Flashcards
According to the DSM IV cluster classification;
Cluster A personality disorders include
“odd eccentric”
- paranoid
- schizoid
- schizotypal PDs
- which may manifest in cognitive distortions and an interpersonal style that is odd, eccentric, or detached.
According to the DSM IV cluster classification;
Cluster B personality disorders include
‘dramatic erratic’
- antisocial
- borderline
- histrionic
- narcissistic PDs
- which often involve behaviour that appears dramatic, erratic, impulsive, aggressive, or affectively dysregulated.
According to the DSM IV cluster classification;
Cluster C personality disorders include
‘anxious fearful’
- avoidant
- dependent
- obsessive-compulsive PDs that tend to involve fear, anxiety, apprehension, or perceived avoidance of harm.
According to the ICD 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders
What are the features of personality disorder?
1. Markedly disharmonious attitudes and behaviour, involving several areas of functioning
- self identity and worth - fragile
- impulse control
- fixed negative ways of perceiving and thinking
- style of relating to others and relationships extreme
2. Abnormal behaviour is enduring, of long standing and not limited to episodes of mental illness.
3. Abnormal behaviour is pervasive and maladaptive to a broad range of personal and social situations.
4. The manifestations appear during childhood or adolescence and continue into adulthood.
5. The disorder leads to considerable personal distress but not always evident.
6. Often but not always associated with significant problems in social and occupational performance.
What are the features of a paranoid personality disorder?
–excessive sensitiveness to setbacks and rebuffs.
– bears grudges persistently
– suspicious, misconstrues actions as hostile
– combative, tenacious sense of personal rights
– suspicious regarding fidelity of partner
– excessive self importance
– conspiratorial explanations of events
What are the features of a schizoid personality disorder?
SOCIAL DETACHMENT
- emotional coldness, detachment or flattened affect
- finds few activities pleasurable
- limited capacity to express feelings
- apparent indifference to praise or criticism.
- little interest in sexual experiences with another person
- preoccupation with fantasy and introspection –
ECCENTRICITY
- lack of desire for close friends or confiding relationships –
What are the features of dissocial (antisocial) personality disorder?
- callous unconcern for feelings of others
- gross and persisitent irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules and obligations
- incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
- low tolerance to frustration;
- low threshold for violence and aggression.
- incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, especially punishment
- blames others
What are the features of emotionally unstable (borderline) personality disorder type A?
Impulsive type
- Emotional instability and lack of control
- Outbursts of violence and threatening behaviour are common especially in response to criticism
What are the features of emotionally unstable (borderline) personality disorder type B?
Borderline type
–Emotional instability
–Self image, aims and internal preferences are often unclear or disturbed
–Chronic feelings of emptiness
–Intense unstable relationships causing repeated emotional crises
–Associated excessive efforts to avoid abandonment
–Suicidal threats or self harm
What are the features of histrionic personality disorder?
- self dramatisation, theatricality,
- suggestibility
- shallow and labile 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, organisation and schedule.
- perfectionism interferes with task completion
- conscientiousness, scrupulousness, undue preoccupation with productivity to exclusion of pleasure and relationships
- pedantic, rigid and stubborn
- insists others submit to their way of doing things,
- reluctant to allow others to do things
- intrusion of unwelcome, insistent thoughts or impulses
What are the features of anxious (avoidant) personality disorder?
- persistent, pervasive tensions and apprehension
- believe they are socially inept, unappealing or inferior to others
- preoccupation with being criticised or rejected in social situations
- unwillingness to become involved unless certain of being liked
- restriction in lifestyle because of need for security
- avoidance of activities involving interpersonal contact because of fear of criticism, disapproval or rejection
What are the features of dependent personality disorder?
- Allows others to make important life decisions
- Subordination of own needs to those of others on whom they are dependent
- Unwillingness to make demand on people on whom they are dependent
- Fear of being abandoned
- Uncomfortable or helpless when alone,
- Fear inability to care for themselves
- Unable to make decisions without excessive advice from others
How do you diagnose personality disorders?
- Clinical
- Importance of history taking
- Can use structured interviews (e.g. IPDE -international personality disorder examination) and questionnaires (e.g. PDQ - Personality Disorder Questionnaire).
A therapy treatment for borderline personality disorder is MBT.
What is it?
Mentalisation Based Therapy - MBT
Mentalizing - process by which we make sense of each other and ourselves, implicitly and explicitly, in terms of subjective states and intentional varied mental processes.
BPD – “mind-blindness”
- non-mentalised mental states / never had their mind held in others mind
psycho-equivalence internal = external
pretend mode internal not related external
teleological only ‘action’ is meaningful
