Personality disorders

Personality disorders (PDs) are enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate from cultural norms, occur across contexts and are associated with impairment or distress. This chapter describes the 10 identified PDs, organized in 3 clusters, and provides a functional analysis of how these long-standing, pervasive, inflexible patterns might developed and be maintained. Common disturbances in self and interpersonal functioning, including deficits in self-knowledge, self-awareness and the ability to regulate emotions, difficulty taking another person’s perspective and establishing and maintaining close reciprocal relationships are described, as well as unique behavioral excesses and deficits that exemplify each of the PDs. The chapter details conducting a functional assessment of PD behaviors and concludes with a review of functional analytic approaches to treatment. An overview of functional analytic psychotherapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and dialectical behavior therapy is provided and the chapter concludes with a case example and dialogue.

Duke Scholars

Author Rhonda M Merwin Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Adult Psychiatry & Psychol ...