What is Schizotypal Personality Disorder ?
When a person has schizotypal personality disorder, they have difficulties in establishing, building, and maintaining relationships with others. It is a condition that can impair your ability to relate with people. The extreme discomfort created by the disorder makes a person to have less capacity for relationships. The disorder manifests in form of perceptual and cognitive distortions. In the U.S. about 3.9 to 4.6 percent of the population tends to have schizotypal personality disorder. Having schizotypal personality disorder test can help your psychiatrist to establish the pattern of behavior and rule out other possible causes of changes in an individual’s personality and behavior. The disorder often begins in early adulthood and may last for years or even persist for life.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder – Causes
It’s not well understood why an individual develops schizotypal personality disorder but there are theories that try to explain what causes the condition. A bio-psychosocial model is applied by researchers to establish the cause. There is likelihood that a person may have genetic and biological or social factors that influence how they behave or the way they present themselves and perceive other people.
Psychological factors like a person’s temperament and personality may be changed by the environment in which they are. The ability to cope with stress may also be associated with the disorder. The way a person interacts with friends, family, and children during early development can play part in causing schizotypal personality disorder. The intertwined nature of genetic, biological, psychological, and environmental factors create a complex pattern of behaviors in an individual.
Symptoms
A person with the disorder has inherent social and interpersonal deficits that present in form of acute discomfort with people. There is reduced capacity for keeping relationships. Also a person has strangeness or eccentricities of behavior along with perceptual and cognitive distortions. The patterns of behavior may present in the following ways:
- Having ideas of reference
- Magical thinking of odd beliefs that tend to influence behavior. A person may have inconsistent sub-cultural norms like being superstitious, having sixth sense of telepathy, and believing in clairvoyance. There may be preoccupations and bizarre fantasies.
- Old thinking or speech, for example having vague and metaphorical thinking and expression. A person may also be stereotyped.
- Unusual perceptual experience like bodily illusions
- Lack of confidants or close friends other that people considered to be first-degree relatives
- Having excessive social anxiety often associated with paranoid fears instead of negative judgment about oneself
Schizotypal Personality Disorder Treatment
No much research exists about the treatment of schizotypal personality disorder. A 9-week randomized study involving double-blind and placebo-controlled groups showed that taking low-dose risperidone can effectively reduce symptoms linked to the disorder. The individuals started on a dose of 0.25 mg per day and it was titrated upward to reach 2 mg per day. The dosage was well tolerated by the individuals.
However, in another study, it indicated that having risperidone in low-dose form didn’t improve a person’s cognitive function like learning, attention, and memory. Many people with this disorder will eventually develop a psychotic disorder. There is evidence proving that psychological intervention is effective in treating the disorder in adults.
Evidence-based treatments, for example psychotherapy have however been useful in assisting a patient to manage various symptoms. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps persons understand their thoughts and how their behaviors correlate with those of others. People with schizoptypal personality disorder need social skills to help address the social deficits they experience throughout their life.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder Test
There isn’t any specific or definitive test that can help diagnose the disorder. So you won’t expect blood tests to accurately assess if a person has schizotypal personality disorder. Individuals who may be concerned about their behavior may want to explore the different diagnosis available in form of self-test. These tests exist online or they may be available in print format.
A person, for example may fill out a schizotypal personality questionnaire or take part in the Structured Interview for Schizotypy. The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences and the Rust Inventory of Schizotypal Cognitions are other possible tests a person can take.
A doctor may conduct an interview to determine the mental health of the person by looking at the symptoms, both past and present. This is called diagnostic criteria. The aim is to rule out the possibility of there being other mental disorders presenting with the symptoms.
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