Schizotypal Personality Disorder (StPD)

Schizotypal Personality Disorder Overview - Treatment, causes, symptoms, medication

Schizotypal personality disorder is primarily characterized by peculiarities of thinking, odd beliefs, and eccentricities of ppearance, behavior, interpersonal style, and thought. Persons with this disorder may have peculiar like ideas: belief in psychic phenomena or have magical thinking.

Schizotypal personality disorder appears to be related to schizophrenia and in ICD-10 (but not DSM-IV) it is not classified as a personality disorder but placed with schizophrenia and called schizotypal disorder.

Many believe that schizotypal personality disorder represents mild schizophrenia. The disorder is characterized by odd forms of thinking and perceiving, and individuals with this disorder often seek isolation from others. They sometimes believe to have extra sensory ability or that unrelated events relate to them in some important way. They generally engage in eccentric behavior and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. Their speech is often over elaborate and difficult to follow.

Diagnostic Criteria of Schizotypal Personality Disorder (StPD)

1. A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
   1. ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
   2. odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
   3. unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
   4. odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
   5. suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
   6. inappropriate or constricted affect
   7. behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
   8. lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
   9. excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self
2. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, another Psychotic Disorder, or a Pervasive Developmental Disorder.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder Study

Recently there has been an increased interest in studying the neurobiology of personality disorders, and, in particular, schizotypal personaluity disorder (SPD). SPD is characterised by cognitive or perceptual distortions, an inability to tolerate close friendships, and odd behavior, but not frank psychosis. Of particular importance to SPD is the concept of the "schizophrenia spectrum," a concept derived from evidence that persons with SPD and schizophrenia often share a common genetic diathesis and show similar, though not identical symptoms. A comparison of findings in SPD with those in schizophrenics may help to clarify what factors lead to psychosis.

The Schizotypal Personality Disorder Treatment

Few individuals with a Cluster A personality disorder are particularly inclined to seek treatment. They are often forced into therapy by family or the legal system. However, once there, individuals with StPD may respond positively to an environment structured to allow them greater personal and interpersonal success than they can achieve outside of the treatment setting. They are not inclined to prefer isolation; they frequently move to greater and greater isolation via social distress and rejection. They may value a setting where they can enjoy some connection to others.

Features of Schizotypal Personality Disorder

• Socially anxious
• Experience cognitive and perceptual distortion
• Show oddities of speech
• Inappropriate affective responses
• Behave eccentrically

Please support this site by sharing this page with others:

  :: :: ::

© 2005, www.depression-guide.com. All rights reserved.

Site last updated: March 4, 2008

disorder personality schizotypal