Personality disorders are chronic patterns of behavior that cause lasting problems with work and relationships. Paranoid personality disorder can result from negative childhood experiences fostered by a threatening domestic atmosphere. Narcissistic personality disorder may be an infantile, defensive personality structure in response to abuse and trauma, usually developing in early childhood or early adolescence. Childhood developmental factors and parenting behaviors that may contribute to the disorder: Narcissistic personality disorder, which is less common than other personality disorders, is estimated to affect less than 1 percent of the general population. Narcissistic personality disorder may be a maladaptive defense of the abused child's or adolescent's emotional splitting, resultant cognitive distortions, and negative/hostile worldview.

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Common Causes and Risk factors of Paranoid Personality Disorder

Schizophrenia

Genetic contribution.

If you are in a relationship with a person that exhibits some of these symptoms, it is important to remember that there is help available. In a relationship, people with pathological jealousy in paranoid personality disorder will often accuse their significant other of cheating or other suspicious activity. The accusations can be set off by the smallest event or it can be totally unprovoked. When this happens, it is vital to consider the fact that this condition is something that affects the brain and might not necessarily represent that person's true identity.

Most people with this illness have periodic episodes, called relapses, when their symptoms surface. Many individuals with schizoaffective disorder are originally diagnosed with manic depression. Schizoaffective disorder is more common in women than in men. Men with schizoaffective disorder tend to exhibit antisocial traits and behavior in contrast to other personality traits. In addition, the age of onset is later for women than for men, and the exact etiology and epidemiology is unclear because of limited research in this area. Estimates of the prevalence of schizoaffective disorder vary widely, but schizoaffective manic patients appear to comprise 3-5% of psychiatric admissions to typical clinical centers.

Symptoms of paranoid personality disorders include:

• Emotional detachment;

• Feelings of anger toward others;

• Believing that people are trying to harm you in some way;

Most personality disordered people are prone to be angry. Their anger is always sudden, raging, frightening and without an apparent provocation by an outside agent. It would seem that people suffering from personality disorders are in a CONSTANT state of anger, which is effectively suppressed most of the time. It manifests itself only when the person's defences are down, incapacitated, or adversely affected by circumstances, inner or external.

We have pointed at the psychodynamic source of this permanent, bottled-up anger, elsewhere in this book. In a nutshell, the patient was, usually, unable to express anger and direct it at "forbidden" targets in his early, formative years (his parents, in most cases). The anger, however, was a justified reaction to abuses and mistreatment. The patient was, therefore, left to nurture a sense of profound injustice and frustrated rage.

Family therapy can significantly decrease relapse rates for the schizoaffective family member. In high-stress families, schizophenic patients given standard aftercare relapse 50-60% of the time in the first year out of hospital. Supportive family therapy can reduce this relapse rate to below 10 percent.