Personality Disorders

Question 1

Describe Cluster A personality disorders (and list them)

Answer 1

Odd-eccentric

-paranoid personality disorder
-schizoid personality disorder
-schizotypal personality disorder

Question 2

Describe Cluster B personality disorders (and list them)

Answer 2

dramatic and emotional

-antisocial personality disorder
-borderline personality disorder
-histrionic personality disorder
-narcissistic personality disorder

Question 3

Describe Cluster C personality disorders (and list them)

Answer 3

anxious-fearfulness

-avoidant personality disorder
-dependent personality disorder
-obsessive-compulsive disorder

Question 4

What are the common characteristics of all personality disorders?

Answer 4

-inflexible and maladaptive responses to stress
-maladaptive behaviours in occupational and social relationships
-ability to evoke and create interpersonal conflict
-unable to recognize or maintain healthy boundaries

key: reactions to situations

Question 5

What are the criteria for personality disorders in the DSM 5?

Answer 5

deviation from the expectations of one’s culture in these areas:
-cognition
-affect and emotional stability
-interpersonal functioning and self-identity
-impulse control and destructive behaviour

Question 6

What are the comorbidities associated with personality disorders?

Answer 6

-mood and eating disorders
-substance misuse
-PDs often amplify emotional dysregulation, a term that describes poorly modulated mood, characterized by mood swings
-life crises of any kind may be risk factors, for instance any grief, loss or trauma

Question 7

What are the results of chronic trauma?

Answer 7

-tend to act out a forgotten history
-unconscious disconnection of their emotions
-difficulty attaching adaptively to others
-difficulty learning from healthy relationships
-manipulation and power struggles present in most relationships

Question 8

What are the types of defense mechanisms?

Answer 8

-repression
-suppression
-undoing
-regression
-“splitting”

Question 9

What are the types of cognitive distortions?

Answer 9

-all-or-nothing
-mind reading
-control fallacies (either can control everything or nothing)
-fallacy of change (I’ll be happy if only I can change this person)

Question 10

Describe Paranoid Personality Disorder

Answer 10

features: mistrustful, avoid relationship that they cannot control and persistent ideas of self-importance

Question 11

What are the nursing interventions for Paranoid Personality Disorder?

Answer 11

-it can be difficult to establish nurse-client relationship
-if trust is established, help pt identify problem areas
-changing thought patterns takes time
-offer choices to increase sense of control