Dealing with Personality Disorder

In many instances a serious personality disorder requires professional medical help. But there are some basic things people can do to self help.
Personality disorders
Personality describes the characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviour that make up who we are and how we feel about ourselves. For most people this remains fairly consistent across situations and time. For some individuals, however, they may experience difficulties in how they think and feel about themselves and others.

For someone experiencing a personality disorder (PD) these difficulties are ongoing and problematic, negatively affecting their well-being, mental health and relationships with others.

It is difficult to find a comprehensive definition for these conditions, which include Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD), as the concept of personality and self are difficult to define. Because of this difficulty, PD can often go unrecognised and undiagnosed for a long time. These conditions are however common conditions in our society and around 1 in 20 people in Britain have a PD.

A PD affects how an individual copes with life, how they manage emotions and connect with other people. People with a PD may find that their beliefs and attitudes are different from most people who may find their behaviour unusual, unexpected or even offensive at times. As a result, individuals with PD’s may have difficulties with:

making or maintaining relationships
connecting with other people, including friends, family or work colleagues
managing and controlling their emotions
coping with life and difficult feelings
controlling their behaviours and impulses.
As a result, individuals with PD’s may feel isolated and alone. Individuals with these disorders are at a higher risk of suicide, with higher levels of self-harm and drug/alcohol abuse being reported by individuals as methods of coping with these difficult and overwhelming emotions and feelings.

There is also a higher risk of experiencing other mental health conditions, such as depression, with PD’s.

Due to the complexity and impact of these disorders there is growing acknowledgment that PD’s are a major mental health issue that needs further attention and investment within mental health.

Types of Personality Disorder
There is a difficulty in defining the range of PD’s that are experienced. There are currently ten distinct types of PD that fall into six personality types.
These categories include:

– borderline personality disorder (BPD)
– obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)
– avoidant personality disorder (AvPD)
– schizotypal personality disorder (STPD)
– antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)
– narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

These six PD types, or ‘clusters’, replace the three previous categories of ‘suspicious personality disorders’, ‘emotional and impulsive personality disorders’ and ‘anxious personality disorders’ and also include a diagnosis of Personality Disorder—Trait Specified (PD-TS) that could be made when a Personality Disorder is considered present, but the criteria for a specific PD are not fully met.

There is much debate about the use of diagnostic categories for PD’s with many people feeling that such categories are judgemental, and the label stigmatising. For example negative associations have been made between these conditions and crime. While this may be true for some individuals with PD’s this is a generalisation and not the case for many people with this condition. For example, some people with anti-social or psychopathic PD may be dangerous, people diagnosed with BPD or PPD are more likely to harm themselves or take their own life. See PersonalityDrive for more info.