Key Features of Personality Disorder

Personalities Disorders

  • Enduring patterns of perceiving and relating
  • Result in significant social and occupational impairment
  • Pattern deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture

Key Features of Personality Disorder

  • Individual has few strategies for relating
  • Inflexible, maladaptive approach to relationships, environment
  • Needs, perceptions, behavior foster vicious cycles; promote unhelpful patterns, provoke negative reactions from others
  • Unstable, fragile coping skills
  • Lack of resilience in stressful situations

Etiology

  • Limited research:
    • Develops according to complex interplay between environment, biological and psychological factors
    • Difficult to conclude one specific neurobiological abnormality as the source

Types

  • Cluster A
  • Cluster B
  • Cluster C

Cluster A

  • Behaviors described as odd and eccentric
  1. Paranoid personality disorder
  2. Schizoid personality disorder
  3. Schizotypal personality disorder