Personality Disorders

Question 1

How are personality disorders categorised?

Answer 1

Cluster A, B and C

Question 2

How are personality disorders defined?

Answer 2

A) Enduring pattern of experience and behaviour that deviates from ones culture in 2 or more areas of:
- Cognition
- Affectivity
- Interpersonal functioning
- Impulse control
B) Inflexible and pervasive
C) Significant distress or impairment
D) Pattern is stable
E) Not better explained by other diagnosis
F) Not attributable to physiological cause

Question 3

What are the cluster A personality disorders?

Answer 3

Paranoid Personality Disorder
Schizoid Personality Disorder
Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Question 4

How do Cluster A personality disorders affect patients?

Answer 4

Perceived safety of interpersonal relationships

Question 5

What are the cluster B personality disorders?

Answer 5

Antisocial Personality Disorder
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Histrionic Personality Disorder

Question 6

How do Cluster B personality disorders affect patients?

Answer 6

Keeping feelings tolerable without acting

Question 7

How do Cluster C personality disorders affect patients?

Answer 7

Anxiety and how it is managed in relationships

Question 8

What are the cluster C personality disorders?

Answer 8

Obsessive-Compulsive (Anankastic) Personality Disorder
Avoidant Personality Disorder
Dependent Personality Disorder

Question 9

How is borderline personality disorder managed?

Answer 9

Dialectic Behavioural therapy
Mentalization based treatment
Symptomatic prescribing
Co-occurring mental illness

Question 10

How is borderline personality disorder diagnosed?

Answer 10

Pervasive instability of relationships, self image and affects. 5 or more of:

1. Efforts to avoid abandonment
2. Pattern of unstable relationships
3. Identity disturbance
4. Impulsivity –> self damage
5. Suicidal behaviour
6. Affective instability
7. Chronic emptiness
8. Inappropriate anger
9. Transient paranoia/dissociation

Question 11

Outline Paranoid personality disorder

Answer 11

Pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others and their motives
NOT exclusively during course of schizophrenia

Question 12

Outline Schizoid personality disorder

Answer 12

Detachment from social relationships and restricted range of expression of emotions
NOT exclusively during course of schizophrenia

Question 13

Outline Schizotypal personality disorder

Answer 13

Pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits - reduced capacity for relationships as well as cognitive distortions with eccentricities of behaviour
NOT exclusively during course of schizophrenia

Question 14

Outline antisocial personality disorder

Answer 14

Pattern of disregard for/violation of the rights of others since age 15

Question 15

Outline borderline personality disorder

Answer 15

Unstable relationships, self image and affects with impulsivity

Question 16

Outline Narcissistic personality disorder

Answer 16

Pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy from early adulthood

Question 17

Outline Histrionic personality disorder

Answer 17

Excessive emotionality and attention seeking

Question 18

Outline Dependent personality disorder

Answer 18

Excessive need to be taken care of leading to submissive and clinging behaviour

Question 19

Outline Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder

Answer 19

Preoccupation with orderliness and interpersonal control, to the point of loss of flexibility

Question 20

Outline Avoidant personality disorder

Answer 20

Social inhibition, inadequacy and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation