Personality disorder

About Personality Disorder

A personality disorder is a type of mental disorder in which you have an unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving, an enduring set of thoughts feeling and behaviours, present since before adolescence and persistent throughout adult life.

No single cause exists for personality disorder. The influence of genetic factors is evidenced by research but this evidence is balanced by evidence of the frequency and force of a childhood history of environmental disadvantage, trauma, neglect and loss.

There are many types of personality disorders, however three broad groups or clusters of personality disorder are generally described by mental health definitions. These diagnostic groups are Cluster A (Odd or Eccentric), Cluster B (Dramatic or Histrionic) and Cluster C (Anxious or Dependent).

Common features described in Cluster B disorder known as Borderline Personality Disorder or more recently known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD) include a tendency to:

• Impulsivity
• Difficulty controlling emotions
• Feeling bad about yourself
• Repeated self-harm
• Feeling ‘empty’
• Rapidly forming relationships and just as rapidly losing them
• Feelings of persecution
• When stressed a tendency to hear noises or even voices

The number of people with EUPD and even the number of people who receive this diagnosis is not clear.

When you put all the personality disorders together, studies estimate prevalence between 1 in 20 of the population and 1 in 5 of the population depending on the criteria in the literature. For EUPD it is estimated (in the USA) that somewhere in the region of 1.5% of the population have this condition.

Treatment

Personality Disorders can be successfully managed.

Different treatment settings and treatment plans may be effective for different people depending on the type of disorder, age, severity of symptoms, underlying causes and support networks available to the individual.