Personality disorders are enduring patterns of behaviours, thoughts and feelings that deviate from social expectations. Many people exhibit these traits occasionally, but deviations that persist across situations and cause significant distress and impairment are considered disorders.

There are a number of different personality disorders. These include; antisocial personality disorder (disregard for the rights of others); schizoid personality disorder (detachment of social interactions and limited emotional expression); schizotypal personality disorder (discomfort of close relationships, cognitive distortions and eccentric behaviour); paranoid personality disorder (distrust and suspiciousness of others); borderline personality disorder (self-harming, difficulty relating to others); histrionic personality disorder (patterns of attention-seeking behaviour and emotions); narcissistic personality disorder (disregard of others, inflated self-image); avoidant personality disorder (feelings of inadequacy, social inhibition); dependent personality disorder (extreme psychological dependence on others); obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (excessive control, orderliness); personality disorder not otherwise specified (mixed symptoms).

What is the evidence for rates of personality disorders in people with PTSD?

Moderate quality evidence finds around 35% of people with PTSD also have a personality disorder. Cluster C personality disorders (avoidant, dependent, compulsive; 63%) were more prevalent than cluster A (schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid; 29%) or cluster B (histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial; 27%).

August 2021

Image: ©Marek Uliasz – stock.adobe.com

The post Personality disorders appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality and temperament are thought to be relatively stable over time. One of the main personality models includes five traits of; 1) neuroticism: vulnerability to emotional instability and self-consciousness, 2) extraversion: predisposition towards sociability, assertiveness, and social interaction, 3) openness: cognitive disposition to new experiences, creativity, and aesthetics, 4) agreeableness: tendency towards being sympathetic, trusting, and altruistic, and 5) conscientiousness: tendency towards dutifulness and competence.

A maladaptive combination of personality and temperament traits may constitute a risk factor for the development of psychological dysfunctions. Moreover, temperament traits are considered one of the most important moderators of the relationship between stress and psychopathology.

What is the evidence regarding personality and temperament in people with PTSD?

Moderate quality evidence found personality risk factors associated with PTSD following a burn injury were high neuroticism, low openness, and low narcissism.

Moderate to high quality evidence found small increases in PTSD symptoms with high-arousal temperament traits of emotional reactivity and perseveration. Decreased low-arousal temperament traits of endurance, briskness, activity, and sensory sensitivity were also associated with PTSD symptoms. There was a medium-sized increase in PTSD symptoms with alexithymic traits. These involves difficulties applying appropriate labels to emotional experiences, difficulty communicating and expressing emotional experiences and needs to others, and a cognitively rigid thinking style that attends to external information over internal information.

There was a large increase in PTSD symptoms associated with rumination. Rumination is the tendency to passively focus on emotional distress and its causes and consequences. This association was found with all PTSD symptom clusters of intrusions, avoidance, hyperarousal, and negative thoughts and mood.

There were medium-sized effects between increased PTSD symptoms and increased fearful attachment style. Small associations were found between more symptoms and insecure attachment style, anxious attachment style, avoidant attachment style, and preoccupied attachment style. There was no association with dismissing attachment style. Attachment style is formed in childhood through infant interactions with their primary caregiver. These interactions determine a child’s immediate emotional responses to stress and emotion-regulation in later life.

Medium-sized reductions in PTSD symptoms was associated with more hope. Small to medium-sized reductions in PTSD symptoms was associated with more optimism and more self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is belief in one’s ability to perform specific behaviours.

August 2021

Image: ©Marek Uliasz – stock.adobe.com

The post Personality and temperament appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality and temperament are thought to be relatively stable over time. A maladaptive combination of personality and temperament traits may constitute a risk factor for the development of psychological dysfunctions. Temperament traits are considered one of the most important moderators of the relationship between stress and psychopathology.

What is the evidence regarding personality and temperament in people with PTSD?

Moderate to high quality evidence found small relationships between increased PTSD symptoms and increased emotional reactivity and perseveration. There were also small relationships between increased PTSD symptoms and decreased traits of endurance, briskness, activity, and sensory sensitivity.

Alexithymic traits involve having difficulty applying appropriate labels to emotional experiences. There is also difficulty communicating and expressing these experiences and needs to others. It involves a cognitively rigid thinking style that attends to external information over internal information. There was a medium-sized relationship between increased alexithymic traits and increased PTSD symptoms.

There was a large effect of increased PTSD symptoms and increased rumination, which is the tendency to passively focus on emotional distress and its causes and consequences. The associations between rumination and post-traumatic symptom clusters (intrusions, avoidance, hyperarousal, negative and alterations in cognition and mood) were all large.

Interactions with primary caregivers form an infant’s attachment style. These interactions determine a child’s immediate emotional responses to stress and emotion-regulation in later life. There was a medium association between increased PTSD symptoms and increased fearful attachment style. There were small associations between increased symptoms and increased insecure attachment style, increased anxious attachment style, increased avoidant attachment style, and increased preoccupied attachment style. There was no association with dismissing attachment style.

There was a medium-sized effect of more hope and less severe PTSD symptoms. Small to medium-sized effects were found between less PTSD symptoms and more optimism and more general self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability to perform specific behaviours), while a large effect was found with more self-efficacy specific to stressful events.

August 2021

Image: ©Marek Uliasz – stock.adobe.com

The post Personality and temperament appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality disorders are enduring patterns of behaviours, thoughts and feelings that deviate from social norms. Many people exhibit these behaviours, thoughts or feelings occasionally, but deviations that persist across situations and cause significant distress and impairment are considered disorders.

There are a number of different personality disorders. These include; antisocial personality disorder (disregard for the rights of others); schizoid personality disorder (detachment of social interactions and limited emotional expression); schizotypal personality disorder (discomfort of close relationships, cognitive distortions and eccentric behaviour); paranoid personality disorder (distrust and suspiciousness of others); borderline personality disorder (self-harming, difficulty relating to others); histrionic personality disorder (patterns of attention-seeking behaviour and emotions); narcissistic personality disorder (disregard of others, inflated self-image); avoidant personality disorder (feelings of inadequacy, social inhibition); dependent personality disorder (extreme psychological dependence on others); obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (excessive control, orderliness); and personality disorder not otherwise specified (mixed symptoms).

What is the evidence for comorbid personality disorders?

Moderate to high quality evidence suggests around 42% of people with bipolar disorder have a personality disorder. The most common include obsessive-compulsive, borderline, paranoid and histrionic. There is a medium-sized increased risk of personality disorders in people with an early age of onset of bipolar disorder (<18yrs) compared to people with a later onset of bipolar disorder.

October 2021

Image: ©Stephen VanHorn – Fotolia – stock.adobe.com:

The post Personality disorders appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality and temperament are inter-related and are thought to be relatively stable over time. Temperament is a basic inherited style and refers to aspects like emotions, sensitivity, introversion, and extraversion, while personality refers to characteristics like behaviours, feelings, and thoughts.

One of the main personality/temperament models is the Five-Factor Model which includes five traits of; 1) neuroticism: vulnerability to emotional instability and self-consciousness, 2) extraversion: predisposition towards sociability, assertiveness, and social interaction, 3) openness: cognitive disposition to new experiences, creativity, and aesthetics, 4) agreeableness: tendency towards being sympathetic, trusting, and altruistic, and 5) conscientiousness: tendency towards dutifulness and competence.

Impulsivity was originally thought to be part of the extraversion construct but is now viewed as a separate personality construct. It involves a predisposition towards unplanned reactions to internal or external stimuli, without regard to the consequences. Impulsivity is a major feature in a variety of psychiatric disorders.

What is the evidence for personality and temperament?

Compared to controls

Moderate to high quality evidence finds large increases in harm avoidance, highs and lows, depression, irritability, and anxiousness, and large decreases in self-directedness and excessive positive mood in people with bipolar disorder. There were medium-sized increases in self-transcendence and medium-sized decreases in cooperativeness and excessive positive mood. There were small increases in novelty seeking and small decreases in reward dependence.

Medium-sized increases were found in impulsivity on tasks assessing response inhibition, delayed gratification, attention, decision making, and risk-taking in people with bipolar disorder. During remission of the disorder, increased impulsivity was found in non-planning, motor, and general cognitive domains.

In first-degree relatives of people with bipolar disorder, there were large effects of more highs and lows, irritability, and anxiousness, and medium-sized effects of more harm avoidance and less self-directedness than in controls.

Compared to first-degree relatives

Moderate to high quality evidence suggests large effects of more harm avoidance, highs and lows, irritability, and anxiousness, and less self-directedness in people with bipolar disorder than in first-degree relatives. There were also medium-sized effects of less cooperativeness, and more novelty seeking and self-transcendence in people with bipolar disorder.

Compared to bipolar disorder II

Moderate to high quality evidence suggests a small effect of more depression in people with bipolar disorder I.

Compared to other psychiatric illnesses

Moderate to high quality evidence suggests medium-sized effects of more novelty seeking, highs and lows, irritability, and excessive positive mood in people with bipolar disorder than in people with major depression. There was also more self-transcendence, more rumination on positive mood states, and less harm avoidance in people with bipolar disorder.

Compared to people with borderline personality disorder, moderate quality evidence suggests large effects of less depression, irritability, and anxiousness, and a medium-sized effect of more excessive positive mood in people with bipolar disorder.

February 2022

Image: ©Marek Uliasz – stock.adobe.com

The post Personality and temperament appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality and temperament are inter-related and are thought to be relatively stable over time. Temperament is a basic inherited style and refers to aspects like emotions, sensitivity, introversion, and extraversion, while personality refers to characteristics like behaviours, feelings, and thoughts.

One of the main personality/temperament models is the Five-Factor Model which includes five traits of; 1) neuroticism: vulnerability to emotional instability and self-consciousness, 2) extraversion: predisposition towards sociability, assertiveness, and social interaction, 3) openness: cognitive disposition to new experiences, creativity, and aesthetics, 4) agreeableness: tendency towards being sympathetic, trusting, and altruistic, and 5) conscientiousness: tendency towards dutifulness and competence.

Impulsivity was originally thought to be part of the extraversion construct but is now viewed as a separate personality construct. It involves a predisposition towards unplanned reactions to internal or external stimuli, without regard to the consequences. Impulsivity is a major feature in a variety of psychiatric disorders.

What is the evidence for personality and temperament in people with schizophrenia?

Moderate to high quality evidence finds large increases in harm avoidance, neuroticism, and trait anhedonia (the enduing trait of being unable to feel pleasure), and a large decrease in extraversion in people with schizophrenia compared to controls without schizophrenia. There were also medium-sized decreases in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and small decreases in novelty seeking, reward dependence, and persistence in people with schizophrenia. Medium-sized increases were found in maladaptive strategies (e.g., using suppression, rumination, and self-blaming) and fewer adaptive strategies (e.g., using cognitive reappraisal and distraction) in people with schizophrenia compared to controls. There was a medium-sized association between increased maladaptive strategies and more severe positive symptoms.

People with schizophrenia showed medium to large increases in negative emotion, poorer emotion regulation, more dissociation and more alexithymia (inability to identify and describe one’s own emotions), as well as decreases in positive emotion compared to controls. High quality evidence also finds a medium-sized increase in aversion and arousal to neutral stimuli, increased aversion to positive stimuli, and increased hedonic (pleasure) response to negative stimuli.

There was increased impulsivity in people with schizophrenia, particularly in those with a comorbid substance use disorder who showed medium-sized increases in negative urgency, low premeditation, sensation seeking, and unconscientious disinhibition compared to people with schizophrenia with no substance use disorder.

February 2022

Image: ©Marek Uliasz – stock.adobe.com

The post Personality and temperament appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Personality disorders are enduring patterns of behaviours, thoughts and feelings that deviate from social norms. Many people exhibit these behaviours, thoughts or feelings occasionally, but deviations that persist across situations and cause significant distress and impairment are considered disorders.

There are a number of different personality disorders. These include; antisocial personality disorder (disregard for the rights of others); schizoid personality disorder (detachment of social interactions and limited emotional expression); schizotypal personality disorder (discomfort of close relationships, cognitive distortions and eccentric behaviour); paranoid personality disorder (distrust and suspiciousness of others); borderline personality disorder (self-harming, difficulty relating to others); histrionic personality disorder (patterns of attention-seeking behaviour and emotions); narcissistic personality disorder (disregard of others, inflated self-image); avoidant personality disorder (feelings of inadequacy, social inhibition); dependent personality disorder (extreme psychological dependence on others); obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (excessive control, orderliness); and personality disorder not otherwise specified (mixed symptoms).

What is the evidence for comorbid personality disorders?

Moderate quality evidence suggests the prevalence rate of personality disorders in people with schizophrenia or in those at high risk of psychosis is around 39.5%, with rates varying greatly across studies. This variation may be explained by the country in which the study was conducted, the study type, instruments of personality disorder diagnosis, or the type of patient care.

June 2020

The post Personality disorders appeared first on NeuRA Library.