Personality Traits and Disorders

• Personality is a set of characteristics that include thinking, feeling, and behaving, distinguishing individuals and promoting consistent actions across situations.
• Personality encompasses unique characteristics influencing behaviors, emotions, thoughts, and interactions.

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

• Openness (to experience): Daring, non-conforming, imaginative.
• Conscientiousness: Ethical, dependable, productive, purposeful.
• Extroversion: Talkative, sociable, fun-loving, affectionate.
• Agreeableness: Sympathetic, warm, trusting, cooperative.
• Neuroticism: Anxious, insecure, guilt-prone, self-conscious.

Personality Disorders Defined (DSM-5-TR)

• An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from cultural norms.
• Personality disorders are pervasive and inflexible, with onset in adolescence or early adulthood, stable over time, and causing distress or impairment.

Manifestations of Personality Disorders

• Involve two or more of the following:
  • Cognition
  • Affect
  • Interpersonal functioning
  • Impulse control
• They are not a consequence of another mental disorder or attributable to a substance or medical condition.

Personality Disorder Clusters

• Characterized by 10 personality disorders grouped into three descriptively similar clusters:
  • Cluster A: "Odd or eccentric"
  • Cluster B: "Dramatic, emotional, or erratic"
  • Cluster C: "Anxious or fearful"

Cluster A: "Odd or Eccentric"

• Includes the personality disorders:
  • Paranoid
  • Schizoid
  • Schizotypal

Paranoid Personality Disorder

• Pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others' motives, interpreting them as malevolent.
• Individuals are perceived as Deceptive and exploitive
• Are considered Untrustworthy
• Sexual partner is not faithful
• Individuals are often quarrelsome, stubborn, and rigid.

Schizoid Personality Disorder

• Pervasive detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotional expression.
• There is neither desire to enjoy close relationships.
• People choose solitary activities.
• People have little to no interest in sexual relationships, and enjoy few to any activities.
• People lack close friends and confidants
• This disorder is characterized by people seeking jobs that require little to no contact with others, possibly living alone.
• They exhibit weak social skills and they are generally unaffected by praise or criticism.
• People rarely show feelings, exhibiting neither joy nor anger and often appear cold, humorless, and dull.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

• Pervasive social and interpersonal deficits: acute discomfort with reduced capacity for close relationships.
• Cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior are key features.
• People seek isolation, choose undemanding jobs with little interaction, and emotions may be inappropriate, flat, and humorless.
• Individuals have attention deficits and their speech may be digressive or vague.
• Delusions that unrelated events pertain to them in some meaningful way.
• Odd beliefs and magical thinking are common.
• Unusual perceptual experiences, odd thinking/speech, suspiciousness/paranoid ideation.

Associated Factors

• Psychodynamic factors include early interactions with demanding or abusive parents, repeated mistreatment, lack of love, and family conflicts.
• Cognitive-behavioral factors include holding broad maladaptive assumptions and inaccurate perceptions.

Schizotypal PD factors

• Twin studies suggest possible genetic links
• Schizotypal PD has many similarities to schizophrenia.
• Deficits in attention and working memory are noted.
• Biological factors include dopamine activity, enlarged ventricles, smaller temporal lobes, and reduced gray matter, all with a possible genetic basis.
• There may be a close relationship with depressive and bipolar disorders.

Treatment cluster A

• Few people seek or attend willingly, and are notably resistant.
• Success is sometimes found with group therapy if social support is given and attendance occurs.
• CBT, object-relations therapy, and social skills training can be implemented.

Cluster B: "Dramatic, Emotional, or Erratic"

• Includes the personality disorders:
  • Antisocial
  • Borderline
  • Histrionic
  • Narcissistic

Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Pervasive disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15, in an individual at least 18 years old.
• There must be evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15.
• There is a lack of a moral conscience, sometimes labeled "psychopath" or "sociopath".
• There is a high incidence among incarcerated individuals, those with substance abuse disorders, and those with gambling disorders.
• There is frequent behavior unlawfully, lying, use of aliases, and conning others for profit or pleasure

Antisocial Personality Disorder

• There exhibits an Impulsiveness with a failure to plan ahead
• Irritability, aggression, fights, assaults.
• There is reckless disregard for safety.
• Irresponsible in work behavior and financial obligations.
• There is a Lack of remorse

Borderline Personality Disorder

• Pervasive instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects.
• impulsivity is common.
• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment are key features.
• Unstable/intense interpersonal relationships alternate between idealization and devaluation ("Splitting").
• There is unstable self-image or sense of self, and potentially self-damaging impulsivity.

Borderline Personality Disorder Part 2

• Includes suicide and being Recurrent suicidal behavior with self-Mutilartion
• Has an instable and intense Affect
• Episodes include: dysphoria, irritability, anxiety
• There is Chronic emptiness
• Has Inappropriate Intense emotions like anger or outbursts.
• There are stress-related paranoid ideations or severe dissociative symptoms.

Histrionic Personality Disorder

• Pervasive excessive emotionality with attention-seeking behavior who
• Are Uncomfortable when not the center of attention
• Interactions are often inappropriate or sexually seductive.
• Rapidly shifting and shallow emotional expressions.
• They Use physical traits to be noticed.
• Speech excessively being impressionistic and lacking in detail
• Express Dramatic, theatrical, exaggerated emotional expressions
• Are Suggestible and easily influenced by others or circumstances
• Considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

• Pervasive grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.
• They have grandiose self-importance and exaggerate achievements/talents.
• Express recognition as superior w/o foundation
• They believe in grand fantasies of exaggerated successes
• They believe that they are above others and can be associated with high class/status

Associated Factors For cluster B

• Psychodynamic factors include a History of poverty, abuse and neglect.
• Cognitive and Biological factors include operant conditioning that develop into manipulative tendencies.

Biological Factors

• High concordance with twins
• Lowered serotonin levels
• Also dysfunctional brain structure

Socio-Cultural Factors

• Western cultures can exacerbate narcissistic traits from an early age

Treatment Cluster B

• Is Typically ineffective without a conscious from lack of commitment
• Few seek help either willingly or unwillingly
• Dialectical Behavior therapy has shown tremendous results that is structured from therapists sucha as Martha Linehan

Cluster C: "Anxious or Fearful"

• Includes:
• Avoidant
• Dependent
• Obsessive compulsive

Avoidant Personality Disorder

• Is known to have Pervasive social inhibition and have feeling of inadequacy
• Hypersensitive and negative to others actions
• Avoids work to not risk of dissaproval or discomfort
• They fear intamacy and intimacy
• They pre occupied with being criticized.

Dependent PD

• The person has an extreme need to be taken care off and become clinging and submissive for attention and acceptance
• They cannot stand to be alone
• Uncomfortable or helpless when alone
• Urgently seeks another relationship for care and support when a close relationship ends

OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder)

• The person is pervasive with oderliness
• Pre occupied with list, rules and details
• perfectionist
• Excessively in love with their work and productivity
• Puts aside friends and any activity that they can do

Associated Factors For Anxious PD

• The persons had shame as children that lead to believe that they are inferior to their peer due to unresolved trauma and abandonment issues.

Treatment For Anxious PD's

• Want acceptance and affection; develop trust to avoid fear or rejection
• Focuses on developing social skills and therapy
• Group formats is best too work on these behaviors
• Anxiolytics and antidepressants have been beneficial

Treatment for dependent PD

• The person shift responsibility upon the therapist
• CBT and assertiveness has improved patients state of mind
• Group practices show significant improvement

Treatment for OCPD

• The person believe that they will fail so they resist to seek help but CBT and structured thinking can assist in fixing the mentality