Question

Why are PERSONALITY DISORDERED people so difficult for psychotherapists to treat? I can think of two reasons.

Answer 1

Personality disorders are different from other psychological disorders, in that they are long standing disorders which have an early onset and are more resistant to change. Whereas other disorders have later onset and may last for a short duration and have better prognosis. Also, personality disorders are specifically related to ones personality or dispositional factors, whereas other disorders may be related to other factors. There is disagreement among mental health professionals about personality disorders because it has been seen that many personality disorders symptoms overlap each other. Also, the reliability of personality disorders is weak as different clinicians provide different diagnosis for personality disorder patients.

The long standing and pervasive nature of personality disorders, it makes very difficult to treat. The personality disorder onset is at a very young age and the disorder becomes a part of ones personality. The person's core beliefs are involved in this building of the disorder, and the core beliefs are very difficult to change. Another problem is that people with personality disorder may not even realise that they have a disorder, as the disorder as become part of their personality and they may say that this is just the way i am or something like that.

Among personality disorders, the most difficult disorders to treat may be antisocial personality disorders, narcissistic personalty disorders and borderline disorders. As, people with these disorder may not seek therapy voluntarily, and may lie and manipulate a lot during therapy in order to escape from the treatment, or they may even pretend that they are participating in the treatment when in actuality they are not.