Impulse Control & Addiction Disorders
Impulse Control & Addiction Disorder Medications
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Treatment
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Treatment
Are Mental Health Problems Preventable?
How Do You Know if You Are Mentally Unwell?
Personality disorders are mental illnesses that affect how someone interacts or relates to people in everyday life. There are ten different types of personality disorders and they affect everyone differently. A common factor between all of them, however, is that they affect how you see the world and how you think. People with personality disorders find it difficult to live a normal life and function with the rest of society because of their thought patterns and emotions.
While personality disorders are chronic conditions and their exact causes are unknown, there are treatments that can help you. While these treatments cannot cure personality disorders, they can help you live a fairly normal life and learn to see the world the way others do. Treatment is often a multi-faceted approach and revolves around helping you understand that you have a problem and how to deal with that problem.
A common side effect of having a personality disorder is depression. Because personality disorders make people feel different than everyone else, it can lead to loneliness, isolation, and depression. To cope with these feelings of depression, which can lead to suicidal thoughts, people require dialectical behavioural therapy.
Dialectical behavioural therapy is a form of talk therapy that is administered by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist. The goal of Dialectical behavioural therapy is to teach people with personality disorders how to manage stress, their emotions, their thoughts, and how to relate to others.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is another common form of psychotherapy that revolves around helping people manage the emotions and stress that result from their personality disorder. CBT also aims to help people talk through their feelings and learn how to view the world the way someone without a personality disorder would. CBT is great for day-to-day living, thinking positive thoughts, and solving everyday problems.
While there are currently no approved drugs to treat personality disorders, there are many medications that can help. These medications help stabilize chemical imbalances in the brain and slow down neurotransmitters that may be causing excess stimulation.
Because personality disorders can lead to depression, antidepressants are often prescribed to treat this condition. Antidepressants, including SSRIs such as fluvoxamine and SNRIs such as fluoxetine, are the most effective treatment for depression, anger, or anxiety that results from personality disorders.
Antipsychotics, such as clozapine and quetiapine, are also used to treat personality disorders. They do this by blocking dopamine receptors in the brain. These dopamine receptors can cause overstimulation leading to feelings of mania and psychosis. As a result, antipsychotics can cause feelings of calmness and serenity rather than feelings of anxiety, which is a common side effect of personality disorders.
A big side effect of personality disorders is that people go through intense mood swings. This is especially true with disorders related to paranoia, schizophrenia, and OCD. Carbamazepine and lamotrigine are two common mood stabilizers used to treat personality disorders, and they do so by calming the brain and reducing abnormal activity.
Personality disorders can also cause a great deal of anxiety and stress because of the difficulty that people have with relating to the world around them. To combat these feelings, you may need anti-anxiety medications, such as citalopram or fluoxetine. Anti-anxiety medications also calm the brain and reduce the amount of abnormal activity.
Personality disorders are one of the most difficult conditions to treat. In addition to affecting everyone differently and being difficult to diagnose, many people do not view their disorder as a problem and expect the world to change for them. However, with the treatments above, people with personality disorders can better understand their mental health, learn to change, and cope with the feelings and emotions that stem from their disorder.