Download Module 69 - Personality Disorders

Personality Disorders
Module 69
Personality Disorders
• Disruptive, inflexible, enduring pattern of
thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal
functioning that are stable over time and across
situations,
– deviate from the expectations of the individual’s culture
Anxious or Fearful
Personality Disorders
(Cluster C)
Avoidant Personality Disorder
• So sensitive about being rejected that
personal relationships become difficult
• See how this differs from Social Anxiety
Disorder HERE.
Dependent Personality Disorder
• Behave in clingy, submissive ways and displays a
strong need to have others take care of them
Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder
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Unreasonable Perfectionism
Need for personal control, order and organization
Does not have full blown obsessions & compulsions
See how this differs from OCD HERE
Odd or Eccentric
Personality Disorders
(Cluster A)
Paranoid Personality Disorder
• Pervasive mistrust and suspiciousness of others are the
main characteristic
Schizoid Personality Disorder
• Is detached from social relationships
• Are true hermits, preferring life alone and avoiding
intimate interactions at all costs
Schizotypal Disorder
• Exhibit the strange behaviors associated with
schizophrenia but without the major symptoms
(delusions, hallucinations)
Dramatic, Emotional,
or Erratic Personality
Disorders
(Cluster A)
Histrionic Personality Disorder
• Displays shallow, attention-getting emotions
• Goes to great lengths to gain others’ praise and reassurance.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• Exaggerates their own importance, aided by fantasies.
• Find criticism hard to accept, often reacting in rage or
shame.
Borderline Personality Disorder
• Instability of
relationships, selfimage, affects &
control over
impulses.
• See difference
between Borderline
Personality and
Bipolar Disorder
HERE.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Used to be called psychopath or sociopath
• Evidence often seen in childhood (conduct disorder)
• Shows absolutely no concern for the rights or feelings of
other people
• Manipulative, can be charming, can be cruel and
destructive
• Blaming the victim for his or her own stupidity
• Has no conscience and shows no remorse
• Occurs in approximately 6 percent of men and 1 percent
of women
• See NBC News video on psychopaths
The Mind of the Psychopath
• Psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder, is characterized
by a lack of conscience for wrongdoing. The psychopathic
person (usually male) may be overtly aggressive and violent or
a charming con artist; he shows little remorse for wrongdoing,
even against friends and family.
• Dr. Robert Hare, a leading researcher in the field of
psychopathy, developed a test called the lexical decision
paradigm. Brain activity (EEG) is recorded while a person
views strings of letters and presses a button whenever the
letters form a word. The words are neutral (table, plate) or
negative emotional (cancer, death) in content.
• Hare found that in psychopathic persons, unlike in normal
persons, the brain processes neutral and emotional words in
the same way, demonstrating a lack of affect.
The Mind of the Psychopath
Dr. Robert Hare describes his EEG studies and later SPECT (single
photon emission computerized tomography) studies on language
processing by psychopathic persons, and reflects on what these results
reveal about psychopathy. (7:13)
Click HERE to view or
on the box to the right.
• Brain activity (EEG) is recorded while a person views strings of letters
and presses a button whenever the letters form a word. The words are
neutral (table, plate) or negative emotional (cancer, death) in content.
• Hare found that in psychopathic persons, unlike in normal persons, the
brain processes neutral and emotional words in the same way,
demonstrating a lack of affect.
The Murderous Mind
PET scans illustrate reduced activation (less red and yellow) in a murderer's
frontal cortex-a brain area that helps brake impulsive, aggressive behavior.
(From Raine, 1999.) – Found 11% less frontal lobe tissue than normal
Cold - Blooded Arousability & Risk of Crime
• Levels of the stress
hormone adrenaline
were measured in two
groups of 13-year - old
Swedish boys.
• In both stressful and
nonstressful situations,
those who were later
convicted of a crime (as
18- to 26- year - olds)
showed relatively low
arousal. (From
Magnusson, 1990.)
Biological Causes of
Antisocial Personality
• Two combined factors predicted antisocial problems:
1. Childhood maltreatment
2. A gene that altered neurotransmitter balance
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Either “bad” environment “turned on” these genes or the genes
made these children more sensitive to the maltreatment.
When shown emotional arousing pictures, they display
lower levels of heart rate and perspiration responses and
less activity in emotional areas of their brain.
Hyper-reactive dopamine reward system that may lead
them to be more impulsive to do something rewarding
despite the consequences.
Bio psycho social roots of crime
Danish male babies whose backgrounds were marked both by obstetrical
complications and social stresses associated with poverty were twice as
likely to be criminal offenders by ages 20 to 22 as those in either the
biological or social risk groups. (From Raine & others, 1996.)
Gender Bias in Diagnosis
• In this study, case histories
were more likely to be
diagnosed as antisocial
personality if they described
a fictitious male patient and
as histrionic personality if
they described a fictitious
female patient, regardless of
which disorder the case
history was designed to
portray.