Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Essay Example

Disorders often result in causing the patient to have a conflicting behavior with the society. Most personality disorders if left untreated develop into more severe psychiatric problems. Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by an unreasonably high sense self importance, and a need to attract attention at all times. People with narcissistic personality disorder are exhibitionists and so behave extravagantly with the intention of attracting attention. These individuals are extremely preoccupied with the ambition of gaining power and this aspect is reflected in their recurring behavioral patterns which they adopt in order to manipulate the people around them.

In most cases, people with Narcissistic disorder are totally insensitive to the feelings of others or in other words, they totally lack interest in others but ironically, they crave their attention in fact they indulge in ways which attract excessive attention. In addition to demanding excessive attention, these individuals possess extravagant and pretentious imposing appearances and styles. People with narcissistic disorder are extremely envious of others who possess material wealth, beauty or confidence because they generally presume that they have the right over all worldly pleasures.

Furthermore, these individuals are very sensitive to criticism and defeat due to a simple fact which is that they possess a vulnerable self esteem. In addition, people with narcissistic personality disorder are arrogant and counterattack when they are criticized. (PubMed Health 2010) Causes: Various factors lead to the development of narcissistic personality disorder, including the presence of oversensitive temperaments from an early age, excessive praise and admiration from parents and severe emotional abuse throughout the childhood.

Diagnosis: Patients with Narcissistic personality disorder are often quite prominent due to their behavioral characteristics. These individuals frequently exhibit anxiety and depression in response to failure of coping mechanisms which they adopt to deal with surrounding people. Other personality disorders, like Schizoid, Obsessive Compulsive, Hysterical, Schizotypal and Borderline personality disorders frequently co-occur with narcissistic personality disorder, this provides an effective way to diagnose this disorder.

Sometimes, people with severe disorder may lapse into psychosis and other psychotic disorders. (Michael, and Yalom 1997) Treatment: Treatment of narcissistic personality disorder is not only complicated but is time consuming as well. It is divided into four aspects: I. Social treatment II. Behavioral treatment III. Psychological treatment IV. Medical treatment Social treatment of Narcissistic personality disorder: The self destructive behaviors associated with narcissistic personality disorder are modified by providing special peer pressure free social and therapeutic environments in Day hospitals, halfway houses and some self helping communities.

Often people with personality disorder have a defective learning mechanism and fail to learn from experiences and mistakes, therefore treatment should target at using peer relationships and the learning opportunities provided by setting up a helpful community. One of the major factor on which accelerated prognosis resides is the fact that how early narcissistic disorder was detected. Therefore, another way to help affected