- Are personality disorders mental illness?
That's what I'm going to talk about in this video.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and in this channel I talk about mental health education
and self-improvement.
If you don't want to miss the video,
which you don't, click subscribe and the notification bell.
Today's topic is based on a viewer question
from General Repair.
Mr. Repair has asked a couple of times for me to discuss
this and has been very persistent.
He even asked that I share his question
which I will do in excerpts.
Dr Marks, Just checking in with you.
A while back I sent you an email about
cluster A,B&C personality disorders.
Still waiting on that video.
I have my alert bell waiting for that video to come out.
I'm excited to see,
yet just checking in with you to see if you made any
progress or any plans on putting it out soon, thanks again.
Then he goes on to say:
Having bipolar disorder
and next episode & hypomania is hell.
You don't get along with other people,
you treat your family like crap.
Do you treat your colleagues like crap
and can't keep a job, your wife is miserable,
with you your kids hate you.
Most days you feel like you're better off dead.
I am such an extrovert I had to close my Facebook account
because I Donald Trumped the crap out of Facebook
got myself in a lot of trouble with friends and family
which no longer talk to me I have nobody
but my wife and kids left.
He goes on to say:
Having bipolar is like Satan the devil lives inside of you.
There is no escape from these feelings of depression,
anxiety, and these crazy ridiculous thought,
the constant negativity,
everybody constantly complaining about how awful
of a person you are.
It wears on you.
This is by all means no life.
No enjoyment.
I enjoy nothing.
Never happy.
Yeah I know what you're going to say,
cognitive behavioral therapy.
Dialectical behavioral therapy doesn't work.
Medication helps but it's not the answer.
I just keep waiting for life to get better
but it just doesn't.
You're a patron.
Thank you, General Repair for your transparency.
There's a lot mixed in with this question.
He was commenting on a video on mixed mania.
But embedded in this question is the overlay of an illness
like bipolar disorder on top of a personality disorder.
You can see this with the mixture of some of his comments
like his kids and wife hating him
and him Donald Trumping people on Facebook
and turning people off.
Bipolar disorder which is a mental illness
doesn't make you do these things.
It doesn't even make people hate you.
Your underlying personality that comes out full force
when you're ill, is what makes people dislike you.
So, just to make sure you understood what I just said,
your personality is your hard wiring
and it's how you react to your environment.
But if you have an illness like bipolar disorder or anxiety,
those disorders disrupt your equilibrium
and can bring out negative aspects
of your personality even more.
But those illnesses themselves
don't make people do things to hurt other people.
So what is a personality disorder?
A Personality disorder is a pattern of inner experience
and behavior that deviates from the expectations
of a person's culture.
That's the official definition.
What's inner experience?
Let's look at the classic filled glass example.
If you see this as half full
and I see it is half empty,
we two different perspectives based on our inner experience.
Mine being more negative and yours more positive.
Both perspectives are still correct though,
but they take on different or opposite tones.
Also with a personality disorder this pattern
of inner experience and behavior must affect
two out of four areas:
the way you think, the way you express emotion,
the way you relate to people or your impulse control.
Also, the pattern of inner experience and behavior
is inflexible, and you see it show up in multiple areas
of your life.
The pattern goes back to late adolescence
or early adulthood.
And the pattern leads to problems
like either internal distress
or problems in your relationships or your work or school.
There's 10 personality disorders
and they are clustered into three groups
based on characteristics that those personalities share.
With Cluster A personality disorders,
people appear odd or eccentric.
I'm going to use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders to define the disorders.
The first cluster A personality disorder
is paranoid personality disorder.
Paranoid personality disorder
is a pattern of distrust and suspiciousness,
these people interpret others motives as malevolent.
Schizoid personality disorder
is a pattern of detachment from social relationships
and a restricted range of emotional expression.
So this is the loner who is not very emotionally expressive.
This can be mistaken for a person
with autism spectrum disorder.
But with Autism Spectrum disorder,
the person has developmental delays as well
and they have more severe social problems.
Schizotypal personality disorder
is a pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships,
or cognitive perceptual distortions,
and eccentricities of behavior.
This would be the person
who may be heavily into paranormal experiences
and they usually don't have close relationships with people.
With cluster B personality disorders
the person appears dramatic, emotional or erratic.
The four cluster B personality disorders are as follows:
Antisocial personality disorder
is a pattern of disregard for, and violation of,
the rights of others.
These people tend to get in lots of trouble with the law
or they chronically break rules without getting caught.
Borderline personality disorder
is a pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships,
self-image, and emotional expression,
and they have marked impulsivity.
This person's life is very chaotic.
Histrionic personality disorder
is a pattern of excessive emotionality
and attention seeking.
This is the person who is very dramatic and extreme.
They may appear very superficial,
wearing their emotions on their sleeves
and considering any and everyone their dear friend.
Narcissistic personality disorder
is a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration,
and lack of empathy.
Lack of empathy means that the narcissist
doesn't appreciate other people's needs.
With cluster C personality disorders
people tend to be anxious and fearful.
The cluster C personality disorders are as follows:
Avoidant personality disorder
is a pattern of social inhibition,
feelings of inadequacy,
and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.
These people tend to be very anxious in social settings.
It can look very similar to social anxiety.
Dependent personality disorder
is a pattern of submissive and clinging behavior
related to an excessive need to be taken care of.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
is a pattern of preoccupation with orderliness,
perfectionism, and control.
A person can have a mixed personality disorder
that's s a combination of a couple of these disorders.
Usually the combination stays within the cluster,
but it doesn't have to.
Is a personality disorder a mental illness?
Although these patterns of behavior are considered disorders
and are in the diagnostic and statistical manual,
we don't think of them as illnesses
in the same way we think of schizophrenia,
or bipolar disorder, depression or even ADHD.
With these illnesses we see disruptions in brain chemistry
that are responsible for these illnesses.
But the personality disorders are patterns of thinking
and behavior that just develop with you.
We all have characteristics
of some of these personality disorders.
We call it having certain personality features or traits.
But if you have several of the traits
of a particular disorder such that it causes dysfunction
in all of these areas of your life,
then it would be considered a personality disorder.
So a person can have features of narcissism
without having the full-blown
narcissistic personality disorder.
What makes a person have a personality disorder?
We don't know exactly.
Some of the disorders run in families.
Some of them like Schizoid personality disorder,
are more prevalent in people with schizophrenia.
We believe that borderline personality disorder
may be a product of early trauma from childhood.
Narcissistic personality is thought to be learned
and the product of inconsistent or negligent parenting.
This would be parenting where you have a combination
of excessive praise that is based
on the parent's own insecurity.
So they're praising you on what they need to hear
in combination with inattention
to your real emotional needs.
This is how you get the excessive need for validation.
What can you do to help a personality disorder?
For borderline personality disorder,
dialectical behavior therapy is extremely helpful.
For histrionic personality disorder
cognitive behavior therapy can be helpful.
The cognitive portion of the therapy helps the dramatic
histrionic person realign their perspective
to a level that is less dramatic.
It also helps them to appreciate how their behavior
serves the purpose of getting attention
and helps them find other ways to satisfy that need.
Unfortunately, with antisocial personality
and narcissistic personality disorder,
there's not much that we have.
People with antisocial personality disorder
usually don't want to be helped.
The person with narcissistic personality disorder,
they may want to be helped.
Just like General Repair
is asking at least about this question,
because they realize how much the problem
affects their relationships.
The problem is that it's hard for them to own
that they are the center of the problem
and that it's not the world doing things to them.
But even if a person does realize this,
like General Repair seems to,
the Insight doesn't last that long.
Its like a rubber band that stretches out
and then springs right back.
So, I'm sorry Mechanical Repair.
But, I have a feeling you knew this already.
Thanks again for asking this question.
I hope you can just keep pushing forward.
It could be that over time as you get older
the negative aspects of your personality
just kind of calm down little bit.
We can see this with these cluster B disorders
that people just burn out as they get older.
And the disorder doesn't go away,
but it's just not as offensive and problematic.
Continue to leave comments and questions.
There's a lot more that can be unpacked with this issue
of personality disorders.
Let me know if you have a specific question or issue
about the other disorders.
However, there are a lot of videos on YouTube
about narcissism and so I'm not sure
if I want to join the pack and add yet another video
about that but we'll see.
Depends on what your question is.
So, share the knowledge with other people
and see you next time.
♪ I am what I am today because I did it my way ♪
♪ Nothing else to say ♪
♪ In this life or the next life ♪