Dyssocial personality disorder (Psychopathy)

Definition and causes

The dyssociale personality structure (DP) is one of many personality disorders. A person with the DP is characterized by a lack of account of social obligations, lack of feelings towards others and an attitude of general indifference.

There is a pronounced difference between the behavior and social norms, why the person with DP often in trouble with the law. The person can not adjust its behavior based on experience, and punishment can not change the DP. The person is also marked by a low frustration threshold, and there are often tendencies to violent behavior.

Apart from the well-documented family studies have shown that inheritance plays a large role in the development of a DP. Opvæksten is often marked by alcoholic parents with little education and poor housing and the economy. Overall results in the failure care and a general negative family atmosphere where there is seldom seen physical and sexual abuse of children. The result is that the child develops a distrust of its surroundings and will never have formed the social experiences that are necessary for

About 2% of the Danish population is suffering from DP to a greater or lesser degree.

Symptoms of DP

At a DP typically seen:

Lack of sense of responsibility towards society's norms.
Serious indifference to others' feelings, and lack of respect for social obligations.
Low threshold aggression and frustration tolerance.
Inability to feel guilt and to allow themselves to be influenced by the experience.

Precautions and diagnosis

Seeing a friend or family member with the above characteristics, it may be difficult to convince the person to seek professional help, because he often will blame others and not seeing themselves as sick. We must therefore have built a close relationship with the person to have persuaded him to enter into a therapeutic treatment. Can we not have persuaded him to seek help, we should even make contact with a psychiatrist on behalf of the person with the DP.

The diagnosis made by a specialist in psychiatry after repeated conversations with that person and immediate family, and a longer observation time.

Treatment of DP

In the treatment of patients with DP used both talking therapy and treatment with drugs.

Medications:
As a person with DP often suffer from a brain disorder that makes it difficult to control his temper, you can provide mood stabilizing medication, which is also used in the treatment of bipolar affective mental health problems, for example. Lithium. Additionally, you can also use the medicines used to prevent epileptic seizures, for example. Tegretol.

The use of these medicines will require cooperation between the psychiatrist and patient, because medicine volume in the body must be within a specific level to be controlled by regular blood collection.

There used not sedate for this population, as there is a risk of developing dependence.

Talking:
In those talks will focus carefully on a change in the person's actual behavior. Here, the patient must learn to recognize the conflicts that his or her behavior creates in social contexts and concrete attempt to change those patterns.

There is rarely talk about internment in a psychiatric unit, as a person with the DP will not work in a group at the department. Contributions will often lead to conflicts among other embedded, so they choose to follow the patient from outpatient example. District psychiatry.

Select and complications

The characteristic dyssociale symptoms become milder with age, because the person with DP Maturing of life experiences. Has it in his childhood had problems with attention disorders, there is a high risk of developing dyssocial personality disorders. In adulthood, is the tendency to abuse or alcohol dependence generally higher among persons with DP.