Personality disorders: Clinical

If you were to describe a friend’s personality, you might say they are creative, or easy-going but nervous in groups. Basically, you’re summarizing the personal traits that make them who they are—either how they think or how they act.

Sometimes these thought patterns or behaviors which make up a person’s personality can actually be harmful in the sense that they interfere with their day-to-day functioning in their personal life, at work, or in social settings. If this were the case, we would say that the individual has a personality disorder.

Now to diagnose a personality disorder, there are general criteria as well as features specific to the individual personality disorders.

The first general criteria for personality disorder is the presence of a constant pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates substantially from the cultural norm, manifested in two or more of the following four areas: cognition - like, for example, deviations in the ways individuals perceive themselves, other people or events; affectivity such as changes in the range, intensity, and appropriateness of emotional responses; interpersonal functioning; and impulse control.

Second, this pattern is inflexible and present in most personal and social situations, including relationships, work and school.

And lastly, the pattern is stable, of long duration, and its onset is in adolescence or early adulthood.

The patterns should not be attributable to a substance like alcohol or another medical condition.

The DSM-5 lists ten personality disorders that are split into clusters A, B, and C.

Alright so cluster A personality disorders include paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder.

In paranoid personality disorder, there’s distrust and suspiciousness of others, which make individuals think that everything people do in relation to them is malevolent. This is shown by at least four of the following seven patterns.

First, individuals suspect that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them without having any reason or proof to think so.

Second, they are preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of those around them.