Personality Disorders

Personality disorders encompass an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture. This pattern is manifested in several areas.

• cognition (i.e., ways of perceiving and interpreting self, other people, and events)
• affectivity (i.e., the range, intensity, liability, and appropriateness of emotional response)
• interpersonal functioning
• impulse control

The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Paranoid Personality Disorder

A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of other such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by the following:

• suspects, with sufficient bases, that other are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
• is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty of friends and associates
• reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her