Question

how is psychopathy in females called?

Answer 1

ANSWER :

• DEFINING PSYCHOPATHY :

Psychopathy is a mental illness or personality disorder in which a person manifests antisocial behaviour, extreme egocentricity , conscience and empathy. It is a neuropsychiatric disease and accompanies the poor behaviour controls. Society of Scientific Study defines psychopathy as, "A constellation of traits that comprises affective features, interpersonal features, as well as impulsive and antisocial behaviors. The affective features include lack of guilt, empathy, and deep emotional attachments to others; the interpersonal features include narcissism and superficial charm; and the impulsive and antisocial behaviors include dishonesty, manipulativeness, and reckless risk-taking. Although psychopathy is a risk factor for physical aggression, it is by no means synonymous with it. In contrast to individuals with psychotic disorders, most psychopaths are in touch with reality and seemingly rational. Psychopathic individuals are found at elevated rates in prisons and jails, but can be found in community settings as well."

• CAUSES OF PSYCHOPATHY :

The exact causes of psychopathy are unknown yet it is considered that genetics, interpersonal and environmental factors together can be the roots of psychopathy. Genetics plays an important role in the cause as the children of psychopaths have a higher rate of being psychopaths themselves. Along with some other causes such as substance abuse, child physical abuse, neglect etc. , False Parenting is also a cause of being a psychopath. Some parents tend to physically abuse their child if they commit any mistake instead of choosing the reward and punishment method. All these reasons appear to cause psychopathy.

Moreover, the diagnosis "psychopath" is possible with the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R, 2003) which is developed by Robert Hare.

• PSYCHOPATHY IN FEMALES :

Psychopathy is usually associated with men and very less researches show that even females suffer psychopathy. Comparitive to men, the no. of female psychopaths is a rare case. Most of the studies which have examined psychopathy in both the sexes, assumed that the characteristics and behavioral expressions depecting the psychopathy disorder are transferable to women but are comparetively less. According to the statistics, 1% of the population are psychopaths and 1 out of 5 psychopaths is female. "Warren et al. (2003)", found female occurrence rates of psychopathy of approximately 17% in prison populations—significantly lower than the rates for men in prison ("Winn et. al, 2012").

Researches also indicate that women who are not born psychopaths but later suffer from the disorder, differ from the men who have the same case.[Verona (2006)] found that, "young women who later develop the disorder show a more relational form of aggression characterized by jealousy, self-harm, manipulation, and verbal aggression". Many such researches indiacate that the feamle psychopaths display agression which complately differs from their male counterparts. So, there is a possiility that the female psychopaths act in a less physically agressive way than men but eventually the destruction caused in the end is almost similar. The female psychopaths can be as dangerous and harmful as the male psychopaths.

Hence, it can be said that Psychopathy is a personality disorder that irrespective of gender affects everyone be it males or females.