|
This personalityd isorder is characterized by the person showing symptoms of schizophrenia, including disturbances of thought, perception, and speech, but the symptoms are not as severe. Typical but not inevitable traits are ideas of reference, paranoid ideation, magical thinking, strange fantasies, eccentric (departing from a conventional pattern) or peculiar behavior, and social isolation.
Symptoms:
Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference) an inaccurate belief that the behaviors of others or environmental phenomena occur to have some effect on the person.
Odd beliefs or magical thinking (the idea that one's thoughts or desires influence the environment or cause events to occur) that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., supersitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telpathyy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations).
Unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions.
Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation (an unfounded suspicion that one is under surveillance or is being followed, talked about, or persecuted).
Inappropriate or constricted affect.
Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar.
Lack of close friends or confidants other than immediate family members.
Excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self.
Treatment Considerations:
We are born with a genetically determined temperament that will continually influence our behaviors throughout life. Understanding of personality disorders and how it affects your life is important -- increased awareness does not lead to radical change but rather to a smoothing of the rough edges and a greater ease of going with their natural flow. To either change or learn how to work with and around personality disorders will require large doses of honesty, hard work, humility, and courage.
People with this personality disorder usually don't change much.
The goal will be to help them find the most comfortable solitary niche.
Cultivate a job and hobbies that are satisfying and allow you to be on your own.
Treatment goals should focus on decreasing resistance to change, goal development, improving social interaction, improving communication, improving self-esteem, and decreasing social isolation.
Information and or Criteria summarized from:
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
|
