AXIS I DISORDERS

Axis I Disorders

Axis I Disorders

Introduction

Personality disorders disagree in several significant ways from Axis I disorders. Unlike the symptoms of Axis I mental disorders (which may come and proceed and alter in power over time) personality disorders do not generally engage distinct episodes or time span in which clinical symptoms are obvious. Instead, the central attribute of personality disorders is long-lasting, extreme, and rigid character traits that are maladaptive. A character trait is a psychological attribute that is somewhat stable over time and over different situations. Personality traits differentiate one person's typical demeanor from that of others. For example, people who show a high degree of the trait of extroversion tend to be outgoing, energetic individuals who feel comfortable in many different social situations and seem to make friends easily. Everyone knows somebody whose character appears strange, but character disorders engage more than eccentricity. For a personality disorder to be identified, an individual's personality traits should be maladaptive. Almost any trait, when it becomes too rigid and extreme, cans origin problems for a one-by-one and for society. For demonstration, extroverted persons can be too extroverted, evolving annoying pests who talk too much or go wrong to esteem other people's privacy. Accordingly, the DSM-IV defines a personality disorder in periods of character traits that are “inflexible and maladaptive and [that] cause significant functional impairment and personal anguish” (APA, 1994, p. 630).

Features of Disorders

The long-term, embedded patterns of behavior seen in character disorders are associated to four other significant features of these disorders.

1. People with personality disorders often do not glimpse themselves as troubled, let solely as pain from a mental disorder. Thus, character disorders are occasionally said to be ego-synchronic, meaning that those who brandish them are inclined to experience them not as aberrations but as natural components of themselves. The farthest traits affiliated with the disorder just seem like part of the person's rudimentary character structure. Indeed, many persons with character disorders believe that their only difficulty is that other persons mistreat or misunderstand them. However, not all character disorders are ego-synchronic; in some cases individuals are cognizant that farthest traits are initiating them trouble and feel a despairing need to gain better command of their behavior.

2. Personality disorders are generally difficult to treat—in numerous situations, tougher than Axis I disorders. Part of this adversity arises from the detail those clients who accept as true that their difficulties are due to the actions of other ones are usually reluctant to seek or help in remedy.

3. Personality disorders are often more causing anguish for other ones than for the individual brandishing them. All mental disorders tax the resources and endurance of friends and relations, but character disorders are especially worrying to others. As the case of Ted Bundy shows, a critical personality disorder can depart a trail of catastrophe in its wake.

4. Personality disorders often emerge together and in blend with Axis I mental disorders, especially disquiet disorders, feeling disorders, and substance abuse. For example, 25 to 85 percent of people ...