Personality disorder

A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture, is pervasive and inflexible across a broad range of personal and social situations. Personality disorders are associated with ways of thinking and feeling about oneself and others that significantly and adversely affect how an individual functions in many aspects of life.
The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. The pattern is stable and of long duration, and its onset can be traced back to at least adolescence or early adulthood. This pattern is manifested in the following areas:

  • cognition, ways of perceiving and interpreting self, others, and events
  • affectivity, the range, intensity, lability and appropriateness of emotional response
  • interpersonal functioning
  • impulse control

Personality disorders are pervasive patterns, and therefore should not be diagnosed based on behaviors noted exclusively since the onset of an eating disorder.  Source: DSM-V.


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