Personality Disorders

Flashcards on Personality Disorders based on lecture notes.

Personality

Refers to all of the characteristics that distinguish a continually developing, self-organizing human being from a predictable machine-like object.

Personality Disorder Symptoms

Patients' symptoms are ego-syntonic (i.e., acceptable to the ego, as opposed to ego-dystonic) and alloplastic (i.e., adapt by trying to alter the external environment rather than themselves).

Paranoid Personality Disorder

Long-standing suspiciousness and mistrust of persons in general, refusal to take responsibility for their feelings, and assigning responsibility to others.

Schizoid Personality Disorder

A lifelong pattern of social withdrawal.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Strikingly odd or strange behavior, magical thinking, peculiar notions, ideas of reference, illusions, and derealization.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

An inability to conform to the social norms that ordinarily govern adolescent and adult behavior.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Extraordinarily unstable affect, mood, behavior, object relations, and self-image.

Histrionic Personality Disorder

Excitable and emotional behavior, behaving in a colorful, dramatic, extroverted fashion, and often an inability to maintain sincere, long-lasting attachments.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A heightened sense of self-importance, lack of empathy, and grandiose feelings of uniqueness.

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Extreme sensitivity to rejection and may lead socially withdrawn lives with a great desire for companionship, but they need unusually strong guarantees of uncritical acceptance.

Dependent Personality Disorder

Subordinate their own needs to those of others, get others to assume responsibility for significant areas of their lives, lack self-confidence, and may experience intense discomfort when alone for more than a brief period.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder

Typically are emotionally constricted, orderly, perseverative, stubborn, and indecisive with a pervasive pattern of perfectionism and inflexibility.

Personality Change due to a General Medical Condition

A significant occurrence with a marked change in personality style and traits from their previous level of functioning, showing evidence of a causative medical factor antedating the onset of personality change.

Cluster A Personality Disorders

Includes three personality disorders with odd, aloof features (paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal).

Cluster B Personality Disorders

Includes four personality disorders with dramatic, impulsive, exploitative, and erratic features (borderline, antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic).

Cluster C Personality Disorders

Includes three personality disorders sharing anxious and fearful features (avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive).

Paranoid Personality Disorder Hallmarks

Excessive suspiciousness and distrust of others expressed as a pervasive tendency to interpret the actions of others as deliberately demeaning, malevolent, threatening, exploiting, or deceiving.

Schizoid Personality Disorder Characteristics

Cold and aloof behavior displaying a remote reserve and showing no involvement with everyday events and the concerns of others.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder Characteristics

Pervasive discomfort with and inability to maintain close relationships, as well as eccentric behavior.

Antisocial Personality Disorder Hallmarks

Pervasive disrespect for and infringement on the rights of others beginning by age 15 evidenced by conduct disorder before the age of 15 years.

Borderline Personality Disorder Presentation

Appearing to be in a state of crisis with frequent mood swings, short-lived psychotic episodes, and unpredictable behavior.

Histrionic Personality Disorder Characteristics

A high degree of attention-seeking behavior with a tendency to exaggerate their thoughts and feelings and make everything sound more vital than it is.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder Traits

A grandiose sense of self-importance; they consider themselves special and expect special treatment.

Avoidant Personality Disorder Central Feature

Hypersensitivity to rejection by others, and timidity is the primary personality trait that is displayed.

Dependent Personality Disorder Traits

A pervasive pattern of dependent and submissive behavior with an inability to make decisions without significant and unwarranted advice and encouragement from others.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Focus

Preoccupied with rules, regulations, orderliness, neatness, details, and the achievement of perfection.

Personality Change due to Another Medical Condition Cardinal Feature

Impaired control of the expression of emotions and impulses with emotions that are characteristically labile and shallow.

Pharmacotherapy approach to Paranoid Personality Disorder

Treatment selection should be tailored to the individual patient and guided by target symptoms, such as the use of low-dose novel antipsychotics for psychotic symptoms or the use of anticonvulsants for irritability.

Pharmacotherapy approach to Schizoid Personality Disorder

Limited evidence exists to guide the psychopharmacologic treatment of patients with schizoid personality disorder; the use of psychotropics to target specific symptoms, such as social and emotional detachment, may be appropriate.

Psychotherapeutic approaches for Antisocial Personality Disorder

Overall, the limited evidence suggests that these individuals seem to respond better to contingency management and other reward-based interventions than they do to cognitive behavioral therapy.

Mentalization

A social construct that allows a person to be attentive to the mental states of oneself and of others; it comes from a person’s awareness of mental processes and subjective states that arise in interpersonal interactions.

Psychotherapeutic treatment for Avoidant Personality Disorder

Psychotherapeutic treatment depends on solidifying an alliance with patients and must convey an accepting attitude toward the patient’s fears, especially the fear of rejection.

Persistence

They manifest as industriousness, determination, ambitiousness, and perfectionism.

Novelty Seeking

It is an exploratory activity in response to novelty, impulsiveness, extravagance in approach to cues of reward, and active avoidance of frustration.

Harm Avoidance

Involves a heritable bias in the inhibition of behavior in response to signals of punishment and frustrative non-reward.

Reward Dependence

Reflects the maintenance of behavior in response to cues of social reward.