Therapy for Clients with Personality Disorders
Personality disorders affect individuals through the latter’s inability to function, reason, or behave. Such a client may face difficulty when encountering challenging circumstances or communicating with others. Additionally, they have an issue when identifying with circumstances and other people. As a result of this dysfunction, the quality of the client’s life is reduced as personality issues are often linked to restrictions when communicating with others and varied limitations at school and work, as well as other social activities.
One issue with personality disorders is that for such individuals, their behavior might be normal; therefore, they do not recognize the issues that impact their life. Another possibility is that these individuals blame others for their troubles, which also impacts their ability to recognize personality problems.
The onset of personality disorders is usually in the teenage years or young adulthood. There are various types of personality disorders, and some symptoms may become reduced or diminished towards the middle ages. This assignment will focus on paranoid personality disorder (PPD), and this paper will describe PPD, provide DSM-5 characteristics of it, describe the therapeutic methodology and modality, and explain how to treat personality disorders with group, family, or individual therapy sessions.
PPD
The primary symptom of PPD is a client being doubtful and questioning the actions or motives of others without an evident reason that would make these suspicions justifiable. Additional attributes of PPD, according to psychiatric nosology, include aggression, suspiciousness, and proportional feeling of self-importance, rumination, and lack of the ability to forgive others (Lee, 2017). However, an important distinction between PPD and other psychiatric conditions is that a person with PPD will not have hallucinations or fantasies. Hence, their perception of reality is altered, and this issue impacts their quality of life and relationship with others, but they do not have delusions.
The DSM-5 manual for mental health disorders distinguishes between three classes of personality disorders. These categories are cluster A, cluster B, and cluster C, and the distinction is made based on the similarity of the symptoms present with each mental health disorder. PPD is under the cluster A category, meaning that a person can be diagnosed with PPD if they have a severe unjustified mistrust of others (Kellett & Hardy, 2014). DSM-5 presents a set of more specific symptoms that manifest in the behaviors of a person with PPD, and the presence of four is individuation that a client has PPD.
Therapeutic Approach
The main issue that clients with untreated PPD face are that their inability to trust others impacts their relationships with others and adversely affects their quality of life in general. However, treating PPD is possible, and with the guidance of a therapist, a person can learn to trust others and coexist with other individuals in social settings without experiencing the symptoms of their illness. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most suitable approach to treating individuals with PPD. CBT is a method based on the implications that one’s thoughts influence the behaviors and emotions of a person; for example, a client with PPD has specific thought patterns that lead him to a belief that others cannot be trusted. By challenging these thoughts and helping the client with PPD adopt healthier thinking, a therapist can help an affected person overcome the symptoms of PPD. Thus, CBT is a functional choice for the treatment of PPD.
When a person has PPD, their thought patterns lead to the distortion and magnification of the signs that other people are not trustworthy. The interpersonal threats that arise within the social setting and interpersonal communication from time to time are not dismissed or evaluated critically. Instead, a person with PPD has patterns that lead them to believe in these threats. A CBT therapist focuses on changing the client’s negative thought cycles into positive ones. Moreover, CBT is a great approach to resolving a plethora of mental health issues caused by negative thinking patterns. According to Amirpour et al. (2019), empirical data supports the implication that CBT helps overcome anxiety, decreases one’s paranoid tendencies, and impacts distrustfulness. Additionally, CBT is a great treatment method because it helps build a trustworthy relationship and rapport between a therapist and their client, which may be an issue when working with PPD. Therefore, people with PPD can improve their mental well-being when they learn to recognize their distorted thoughts and challenge them with rational and positive ones as a result of CBT.
Therapeutic Relationship
A therapeutic relationship between a therapist and their client is essential for healthcare, especially psychiatric and mental health services. As a result of this relationship, there is a joint effort toward helping an individual resolve their mental health issues. This approach requires a therapist to be practical, validate the client’s sentiments, listen and be compassionate, and participate in the shared dynamic that is a part of the treatment process. Moreover, having group therapy sessions or involving the client’s family can help enhance the results of treatment. In summary, this paper examines personality disorders and, more specifically, the symptoms and treatment of PPD. PPD affects a client’s ability to trust others and makes them unjustifiably suspicious towards others.
Supporting Resources
Articles by Lee (2017) and Amirpour et al. (2019) are scholarly and published in professional peer-reviewed journals. An insightful text by Sleep and Sellbom (2018) was published and distributed by the American Psychological Association. Finally, Kellett and Hardy (2014) published their article in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, which is a trustworthy source.
References
Amirpour, L., Mirzakhani, M., Gharaee, B., & Birashk, B. (2019). Efficacy of anxiety-based cognitive behavioral therapy for paranoid ideation in a non-clinical population: A randomized controlled trial. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 13(2), 10-20.
Kellett, S., & Hardy, G. (2014). Treatment of paranoid personality disorder with cognitive analytic therapy: A mixed methods single case experimental design. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 21(5), 452–464. Web.
Lee, R. J. (2017). Mistrustful and misunderstood: a review of paranoid personality disorder. Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 4(2), 151-165.
Sleep, C. E., & Sellbom, M. (2018). F60.6 Avoidant personality disorder/F60.0 Paranoid personality disorder: Categorical and dimensional approaches. In J. B. Schaffer & E. Rodolfa (Eds.), An ICD–10–CM casebook and workbook for students: Psychological and behavioral conditions. (pp. 177–189).