Antisocial Personality Disorders

Antisocial personality disorders, misanthropy, psychopathy and sociopathy have become regular diagnoses of average people and the ones, who are in prison. As well as criminal behavior, antisocial personality disorders break patterns of normal social conduct. They do not concern of being a rebel in society, but being a threat to public safety and peoples’ health. The statistics shows increasing number of individuals, who suffer from psychological disorders; in most cases, they are connected with antisocial behavior. Personality disorder is something a person must admit in order to receive professional help in time. Otherwise, disorders may lead to unexpected results, such as violence, harmful additions, impulsivity, braking the law or suicide. The reasons of such conduct are different and the research paper is about to reflect them with supporting examples. The paper will demonstrate the list of personality disorders, definitions of antisocial disorder and criminal behavior; list the symptoms and reasons of antisocial disorder and possible treatment.

Antisocial personality disorder implies unacceptable behavior of an individual that can inflict harm to an innocent. For instance, aggressive parent may hurt a child or unstable teacher may harm a student. There is no problem to recognize people with personality disorder, because they express negative emotional state, shortness of temper, irresponsibility, the lack of honesty and deceitful first impression. All these features easily force people towards violations of the law and imprisoning being a result of antisocial conduct. What regards criminal behavior, it is more likely leads to prison than antisocial personality disorder. In most cases, disorder is not associated with children under 15 years old; nonetheless, individuals of the following ages are in high-risk group. Consequently, it is essential to protect teenagers and prevent them from ruining lives. Unsuccessful samples of behavior must be replaced with proper conduct of adults being the role models to follow. Following this point, antisocial personality disorders have to be treated in special state units with timely psychological help. In fact, antisocial personality disorder can be genetically transmitted to further generation.

According to the experts of online magazine “Psychology Today”, people suffer from different kinds of personality disorders. The author of online article Neel Burton pointed out 10 of them. There are several types of personality disorders that cause the violation of moral and ethical conventions in society. They are:

• paranoid personality disorder, which is unreasonable lack of trust to relatives and friends; it involves constant fear and feeling of anxiety.
• schizoid personality disorder causes the experience of complete indifference to social or sexual life; besides, in this case, inner life is more exciting than external.
• shizotypical disorder is characterized by odd thinking, beliefs and behavior; it is also known as “latent shizoprenia”.
• borderline personality disorder is about being a border between two disorders, neurotic and bipolar ones. Experts state that the roots of particular disorder come from child sexual abuse. For this reason, a person cannot get rid of a feeling of abandonment or emptiness.
• histrionic personality disorder shows the lack of approval. Its “victims” experience desperate need for attention. Thus, they do their best to be seductive, charming, and approved no matter what.
• narcissistic personality disorder is classified by unreasonable sense of self-esteem, which must be admitted by environment. Otherwise, the person might experience rage because of the lack of admiration. “Psychopathic patients can be conceptualized as aggressive narcissists, with the attendant intrapsychic object relations” (Kernberg, 1992).
• avoidant personality disorder deals with the fear of being unloved or unapproved by others. It definitely comes from the bad relation with parents, siblings or peers in early childhood or teen age. As a result, it is a challenge to meet somebody new for people with avoidant disorder.
• dependant personality disorder comes from the limited feeling of security, care and protection. A person wants and needs to be submitted by another individual, who seems to be more protective and safe. The disorder is characterized by avoidance of responsibility and decision-making.
• obsessive-compulsive personality disorder can be recognized by unnatural attention and devotion to rules, details, and different kinds of organization. It is hard to control it but this disorder is treatable.
• antisocial personality disorder – is the specific kind of conduct, when a person violates or manipulates the rights of others people for a long time period (Burton, 2012).

The last one will be discussed in detail. To be clear, antisocial personality disorder is rather violation of other people’s rights, cruel attitude towards animals, fire-setting, breaking and entering, and humiliation of others. It is also essential to distinguish one time rage or case of manipulation and constant social disorders. Thus, anientisement, damage or hurting people must be prevented or at least punished in a proper manner to make a person understand how harmful that is. The real reasons of antisocial behavior are not clear, however, according to experts’ points of view, environmental factors impact on it in most cases. Following this point, some people are born with innate psychological or psychopathic disorders while others can obtain them during lifetime because of the child abuse, alcoholic parents, antisocial environment and unsuccessful examples of behavior. As a rule, people in prison suffer from antisocial personality disorder. In fact, a person cannot change for better being surrounded by the same “patients” with similar problems. To find out whether someone demonstrates antisocial behavior several dominating symptoms define the disorder. Among them are:

• intentional manipulation;
• obvious problems with substance abuse;
• constant fights, lie and theft;
• breaking the law often enough;
• unreasonable gusts of rage;
• the absence of guilt no matter what the person has done.

In case several of these symptoms or all of them are noticeable in a person’s behavior, it is a “warning bell” of disorder. “It is estimated in epidemiological studies in the community that only 47% of people who meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder have significant arrest records” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 4). It is not a secret that all disorders come from the early childhood. Traumatic experiences leave the print and later on cause mentioned above ways of conduct. For example, substance abuse is the consequence of unhappy childhood, home violence, parents’ alcohol or drug addiction. With no intention, reaching the breaking point, child begins to copy familiar behavior of one of the parents. Subconsciousness dictates the ways of revealing suppressed desires, offence or rage. Here intentional manipulation plays the key role; in order to reach something desirable, a person is not afraid of violating, even if that is hurting others. In addition, gusts of rage and no gilt come in one package; unpunished behavior bears new acts of aggression. Moreover, indifference to the actions and their consequences often leads to breaking the law. For this reason, administrative and criminal liability has place to be and call for responsibility of a trespasser in order to prevent similar cases. That is why antisocial behavior leads to jail or prison. Unfortunately, antisocial disorder might be injurious for suffering person and his or her environment. In spite of polite and adorable first impression, people with mentioned mental illness are often passive-aggressive and manipulative. The desirable outlet is to reach psychological maturity and overcome fears that cause antisocial behavior. It is clear that personality disorder requires proper treatment by professionals. In most cases, antisocial potential patients never seek for help, especially from psychotherapist. Clinical guideline informs, “People with antisocial personality disorder should have the opportunity to make informed decisions about their care and treatment, in partnership with their healthcare professionals.” (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2013, p. 6). Immediate treatment from antisocial personality disorder is vitally necessary; the sooner the problem will be fixed, the less consequences might arise. To support this statement, mental illness can be treated by:

• individual and group cognitive psychotherapy where patients may share their experience and compare it to the others’. It helps to realize how deep or helpless the case is. The usage of this technique provokes self-control, measuring the level of irritation and anger. However, this method is better to be used in individual therapy.
• taking medications is one of the ways to deal with personality disorder and continue social life without volitions.
• self-help strategies consist of discussions of feelings, emotions, disturbing thoughts and actions.
• hospitalization in secure units, which provide immediate mental help according to the doctors’ recommendation.
• physical treatments, which mostly concern lobotomies or another psychosurgery that might help during the treatment; nevertheless, this is the last option of behavior’s correction.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the treatment of personality disorders gives positive effect, if patients are result-oriented. Nonetheless, it is possible to help them out with effective treatment using individual or group therapy. Thus, realizing that other people suffer from the same disorder, gives hope and feeling of unity, being a part of something important. Additionally, the correct option of treatment of antisocial personality disorder is the key to successful result. Professional help is necessary for all patients, including those, who are in prison. Hesse noticed, “Psycho educational, group-based prison programs have helped patients change their criminal ways of thinking, reducing the risk of recidivism” (2010, p. 2). Unpleasant environment does not help to resolve issues of particular disorder; for this reason, prisoners with antisocial disorders must be treated in special units. “Psychotherapy will not turn serial killers or other extremely severe psychopaths into responsible citizens, and psychotherapy does not cure antisocial personality disorder” (Hesse, 2010). Nonetheless, it can be the first step that prevents people from hurting or manipulating their environment. There is no harm in trying different kinds of treatments in order to improve personality. If symptoms match criteria of antisocial personality disorder and professional admits the diagnoses, the treatment is supposed to be brought to life immediately. Thus, special hospitals and regional nursing units can help to recover.

Speaking of proper treatment, Saint Leo Catholic University provides Saint Leo Core Value. It is not about offering excellent education programs and skills development only, but also suggesting spiritual education as well. Thus, the university guarantees personal, educational achievements using mutual trust and respect. Saint Leo Catholic University is a perfect place, where people with personality disorder may entrust themselves with tutors and teachers. The environment of the university seems to be the right place for treating damaged souls of teenagers. Personality disorder is a demon inside that must be fought. Saint Leo Catholic University promises the best assistance and education.

Following Hesse’s ideas, “Antisocial personality disorder is associated with suffering for the individual and, perhaps more than any other psychiatric disorder, causes problems for people living with antisocial patients” (2010, pp. 3-4). To treat mental illness is not as easy as it might seem at first. Human mentality is a fragile tool in hands of professionals. In brief, this research paper has demonstrated the list of the main personality disorders, the definition of antisocial personality disorder, the reasons of its appearance and its dominating symptoms as well as the most effective methods of treatments of antisocial behavior.