Mental Health Awareness: Personality Disorders

When you hear personality disorder (PD), what is the first thing you think of? Is it an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder? Maybe it’s a narcissistic personality disorder? Many people are familiar with antisocial personality disorder from true crime documentaries, horror or thriller movies, etc. There are various personality disorders compared to other mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Many of these disorders are largely unknown to the general public, and the well-known personality disorders are often feared and villainized in pop culture. Due to little being known about personality disorders, individuals with personality disorders are often stigmatized and ostracized from society.

One of the first steps in destigmatizing personality disorders is to figure out what is a personality disorder. Since studies on personality disorders and mental health, in general, are still relatively new, the definition is often changing. 

Hospitals like John Hopkins Medicine and the Cleaveland Clinic say that people with personality disorders display a rigid way of thinking and have difficulty adapting to situations, often to the point of disrupting their lives on a social, personal, and professional level.

The DSM-5, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition Text Revision, is used by mental health professionals in the United States to classify and diagnose mental disorders. According to the DSM-5, there are three subcategories of personality disorders. These subcategories are called clusters and are divided into clusters A, B, and C.

Cluster A:

Often described as odd or eccentric, personality disorders that fall under this subcategory are paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder.

Cluster B:

Personality disorders that fall under this category are described as dramatic or erratic. This subcategory includes borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder.

Cluster C:

This subcategory is defined as personality disorders that are anxious or inhibited. The personality disorders in this category are avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

Dr. Christopher Albert, the director of UTRGV’s counseling center, has shared his experiences during his career when it came to dealing with personality disorders.

“Now, my experience has mainly been with borderline personality disorder. And that’s the one that’s been most researched. And, as I said, before treatment has been shown now to be really effective with borderline personality disorder, as long as a person remains in treatment. And that’s key. So probably the most popular right now, in terms of a therapy approach for it is something called dialectical behavior therapy or DBT. It’s a very structured process,” Dr. Albert said.

There is a multitude of personality disorders, and each has its complexities. However, popular media, such as film and tv, have villainized these disorders. The dark and often gruesome depictions of these mental health disorders push a narrative that individuals who suffer from these conditions are evil and unsafe to be around. In actuality, individuals who are diagnosed with a personality disorder are more likely to hurt themselves than others.

Popular media like cinema can have a significant impact on a community. Such movies like “Fatal Attraction” (dir. Adrian Lyne), “Split” (dir. M. Night Shyalaman), and “Joker” (dir. Todd Philips) brought more awareness to the importance of mental health. However, a significant concern with these films is how they connected mental health issues and disorders to crime and violence. The correlation between mental health struggles and violence is an old argument that many mental health professionals have looked into.

“I think a common issue that we see in the entertainment industry a lot is utilizing people’s mental illness as an excuse to, you know, take interest in something and kind of gawk at it like looking at an animal in the zoo or something like that. And these are human beings. And we have to remember that, right,” Dr. Albert stated. “A second problem is that these movies tend to portray someone with particular mental illnesses, such as dissociative identity disorder, which by the way, is not a personality disorder, but it’s often associated with personality disorders. And borderline, which is a personality disorder, tend to present the character as a monster”. 

An academic article titled “Exploring the Link Between Personality Disorder and Criminality in a Community Sample,” published in the Journal of Personality Disorders in 2009, focused on individuals diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

“In conclusion, the present results suggest that the link between personality disorders and criminality is far from simple or straightforward,” stated the article. “While the broad psychopathy factor identified here and by others (Ullrich & Marneros, 2004, 2007) does appear to be at least predictive of criminal offending, the mechanisms whereby psychopathy, broadly conceived, is causally related to crime remain to be unraveled, and should be the focus of future research.”

Hearing terms like narcissism or antisocial often makes people scared of individuals with these disorders. Still, no substantial research shows that individuals with a personality disorder are more likely to commit crimes. Such thoughts and opinions also tend to create harmful stereotypes of these individuals.

“We want to normalize it [personality disorders] in the sense that these are people that can have, especially if they’re in therapy, can have productive lives and can form meaningful and loving relationships. [They] can have a family, can have kids, all of that; they just need that added help. And [we need] to sympathize with the fact that it often relates to things that were totally out of their control growing up, such as abuse, and things that should have never happened,” Dr. Albert mentioned.

An overarching theme regarding personality disorders and mental health disorders is that research and public awareness on the issues are relatively new. As more knowledge about these disorders and conditions come to light, more effective and promising treatments will be able to be developed. 

For those with a personality disorder, there are also support groups that raise awareness and build a community for people with the same condition. An example is the non-profit organization: Treatment and Research Advancements for Borderline Personality Disorder (TARA4BPD). It was established in 1994 to help advocate, research, and educate people affected with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Hopefully, one day, the association between personality disorders and crime will no longer exist and these individuals will be more readily accepted into society. Until then, it is essential to remember that people with personality disorders are simply people too.