Obssesive Personality Disorder - Term Paper Example

? Obsessive Personality Disorder Presented by Introduction Understanding an individual’s obsess behavior is a complicated task that requires an experienced person. Human behavior is unpredictable and complex hence, trying to understand it requires a high degree of accuracy. Different people have various characteristic behaviors and psychologists have come up with different explanations about why people behave in certain ways. Even when the psychologists put more effort in explaining these causes, people are still not enlightened on their behaviors and such disorders are always common in the present society. According to Cooper (2000), people have difficulties in distinguishing between good and evil since the judgment depends on the individual’s perception on the action. The person’s ego determines their actions, which are affected by the environment, the childhood life, and the individual thinking capacity. Obsessive personality disorder is a type of disorder whereby an individual loses control over their actions and thoughts because of too much occupied minds. Persons suffering from obsessive personality disorder find it hard relaxing because their minds are always preoccupied by a lot of details, productivity, and rules. Most people see obsessive personality disorder affected people as stubborn, self-righteous, and uncooperative. Disorders that fall in the category of dependent personality disorders have a lot of anxiety and always have fear of the unknown (Mancebo, Eisen, Grant, & Rasmussen, 2004). Personality disorders are categorized looking at the following criteria; The symptoms must have been seen for an extended period of time, they are simultaneous, and are not accelerated by the use of drugs such as alcohol. In additional, such symptoms should have a track record since the early childhood. The person suffering from such symptoms must show a sign of distress or unacceptable consequences in different aspects of his or her life. Finally, symptoms must be seen in at least two of the following areas: Emotions (the appropriateness and range of emotional functioning) Interpersonal functioning (Relationship with others and social status), Thoughts (how the person views the world, how the person thinks about oneself and others, level of interaction). Impulse control. Discussion Psychological perspective towards obsessive personality disorder In every psychodynamic concept of obsessive thinking, the parent-child relationship comes into action. A child experiences a void-like state when he or she grows in absence of key parental relational processes that include; emotional proximity and childhood monitoring. On the other hand, a child develops anxiety that plays the role of a ‘dead’ inner world arising from a parental abandonment and loss of good things in life. The following aspects cause a child to develop defensive mechanisms of idealization. Psychologists view an abandoned child as a person who lacks essential care in life, and claims that single parents cannot raise a child in an effective manner in fear of destroying and losing the good object. Mostly, depressed parents try to keep their children away from their peers because they are not in the same class hence destroying their mental capability. The psychological effort by experts to bring the child into living a normal life fails because the child has already suffered a lot and developed fear of people. This child ends up growing with ignorance and fear of making mistakes thus, developing an obsessive personality disorder (Villemarette-Pittman et al, 2004). The obsession structure created by a victim of personality disorder always alternates between appealing and non-appealing perspectives in relation to oneself and others. The affected person faces opposing thoughts between marinating the good object and allowing people to interfere with their life. Finally, the individual gains an obsessive thinking that is seen as a way of losing the good object, but ends up controlling it within the mind. The problem arises when an obsessed thinker is unable to make persuasive decisions becoming an internal security issue. The thinking capacity of such an individual becomes compulsive making an individual feel a sense of being out of control in defending his or her core levels (Cooper, 2000). Description Obsessive Personal Disorder makes an individual more active and increases the need for controlling his or her own environment. A person affected by Obsessive Personal Disorder is always under control of his or her actions and even orderly, but it also makes a person inflexible and unable to surrender control. The following characteristics make such individuals unable to express their feelings towards other people, lack close relationships, and unable to enjoy successes they achieve in life. Psychologists argue that the key feature of obsessive thinking occurs due to compulsive and repeated occupation of mind with many images, words, and ideas that always disturb a person. The victim experiences distressing thoughts and ideas that end up interfering with mind functions. An attempt to control such feelings leads to a person experiencing a lot of stresses. For example, a person might think of one of the family members dying, a situation that will continue disturbing the mind. The above obsessive thinking might be in form of images of the person dying, or certain words running through the victim’s mind (Cooper, 2000). People diagnosed with obsessive personality disorder require an effective intervention by medical practitioners using the recommended psychodynamic approach. The following disorder if observed during early childhood should be treated immediately because it turns out to having serious impacts during adulthood. In addition, people especially psychologists dealing with such victims require additional trainings and counseling services in order to equip them with the necessary knowledge. On the other hand, human behavior takes many forms and depending on the peoples’ culture, some behaviors might be acceptable in one society but opposite in the other. People suffering from obsessive personality disorder are termed as curses from the ancestors and are unacceptable in certain cultures. The problem of misunderstanding creates many issues in the current society where every individual strives overdo others even if it means taking their life in order to gain something. Understanding our behavior is very important since is the only way that people can live in peace and minimize the cases of crime, which occur almost daily. Working environments have different rewards for their conscientiousness but people with obsessive personality disorder who manage working areas experience a lot of problems. Immediate actions are needed, that have not been scheduled leaves such people paralyzed as they get overwhelmed by making decisions without any concrete answer. In addition, such individual expect people to always stick to the initial plans and procedures because they have no room for corrections. Moreover, even when people suffering from this disorder are behind schedule they always get a hard task delegating work to colleagues because other people might not do the work according to the expectations of the victim. Psychologists describe people with obsessive disorder as individual who cannot see beyond their nose, or people who cannot forecast. Such individuals always get anxious in situations requiring clearly defined rules because they introduce a kind of fear that might see the person make a mistake and punished. Testimonies from children brought up by depressed parents illustrate a true character of an obsessive individual. Such people always respond to their feelings of distress and face many difficulties and demands in life. Moreover, people affected by obsessive personality disorder are intolerant of their weaknesses but do not like expressing it to the public. They are also seldom when it comes to releasing their needs for control. In additional, such people are described as anti-social because they get tired attending to recreational activities. In most cases, obsessive personality disorder victims turn recreational activities into opportunities for perfecting their talents, rather than enjoying the activity. During vacation, obsessive personality disorder sufferers carry along their homework with them in a name of avoiding wasting time and always get relieved upon returning to their usual environments. The following character traits lead to loneliness and lack of interpersonal relationships. Demographics Out of the many studies conducted on the prevalence of personality disorders in the United States population, only 9.1% of the population has recorded the disorder characteristics. The study carried out in 2007 showed that 1 out of 11 people in US suffered personality disorders of various types. A survey carried out by Crawford et al in 2005 showed that 4.7% of US population suffered obsessive personality disorder while Lenzenweger et al (2007) survey recorded 2.4 % disorder prevalence. In addition, the personality disorder admission in UK hospitals in 2009-2010 as recorded by the world health organization indicated that 16 people suffering from Obsessive Personality disorder were admitted. Figure 1 illustrates the hospital admissions of different personality disorders on the year 2009-2010. Figure 1: UK 2009-2010 Personality Disorder Hospital Admissions (Source: UK Department of Health, 2010). Personality disorder prevalence’s are also categorized in terms of gender. Figure 2 below shows the Personality Disorder admission by gender on the year 2009-2010. From the statistics shown, obsessive compulsive disorder had 69% of male admitted while 31% were female. The following is an indication that the obsessive personality disorder affects men more that women. According to Nordahl, Hans and Tore (1997), men are most affected by the obsessive personality disorder because most of wrong doings in the early childhood are associated with men. Diagnosis of obsessive disorder occurs in late adolescent and in U.S. the disorder affects twice as many men as women. In addition, sociologists claim that men take time to relieve anger compared to women therefore; are capable staying with their problems for a long period. Generally, the obsessive personality disorder occurred in about 1% of the population but recently an occurrence of ranges of 3% and10% have been reported in psychiatric patients. Figure 2: UK Personality Disorder Hospital admissions by gender (Source: UK Department of Health, 2010). Causes Obsessive personality disorder has received little attention from health practitioners, a situation that has accelerated the rate of effects in the current society. The disorder could be hereditary in a family or occur due to change of environment. Psychologists have not been able to determine the main cause of this disorder, but poor parenting tips have been the main causes associated with the disorder especially among young children. In addition, the current studies tend to associate early life experiences that conclude that emotional development of children largely depends on parental guidance and the responsiveness of a child. Presence of these two qualities make child feels more secure and valued in the family. Many studies carried out by psychologists revealed that most children suffering from obsessive personality disorder missed parental guidance and care, while other never experienced the care of parents (Mancebo, Eisen, Grant & Rasmussen, 2004). Most interviews and surveys conducted to people suffering from obsessive personal disorder reveals that most often experienced emotional parents. Such parents are overprotective or over controlling. According to Merrett and Easton (2008), people suffering from the following disorder admitted to have experienced many punishments from their parents in order to maintain rule and order in the house no matter even if one makes a minor mistake. In addition, such children never received any reward for a good job done. The following situation makes a person unable to develop a sense of joy, or independent thought because of the fear build during the childhood age. As a way of avoiding punishments from parents, the child starts developing obsessive personality disorder symptoms. Moreover, such children always have a lot of anger towards their parents making them obedient to the outside world but treat their seniors harshly. On the other hand, psychologists have well documented genetic contributions towards obsessive personality disorder causes. Culture is assumed to play a significant role in the development of the disorder among the infected people. Moreover, culture has a lot of impact on the causes of the disorder especially in communities that uphold their cultural beliefs to date. For example, communities that encourage child bearing practices like those discussed above have many children suffering from obsessive personality disorder. Alternatively, cultures that are comparatively strict on early childhood behaviors have strong ethics and end up producing healthy people (Alarcon, 1998). Rachman (1998) argues that religious and professional heads requires serious attention on rules and regulations they provide to their member because they could increase the vulnerability of obsessive among their followers. The difference between people who grew under strict orders and those following orders should be determined while determining the cause of obsessive personality disorder. In addition, people who behave in accordance to the law, for example the military, fall outside such expectations because they only follow orders. Symptoms Symptoms of obsessive personality disorder are associated with emotional, mental, and behavioral control of victims and others. In cases where the victim shows excessive conscientiousness, the problem is associated with general poor problems. People showing such symptoms experience difficulties in making simple decisions making them highly inefficient. In addition, such people always urge for control of situations and are easily upset by small changes on schedules or planned events. A person suffering from severe obsessive impulsive personality disorder must show at least 4 of the following symptoms: Always possess excessive concern for perfection even in minor details that have interference with projects completion. Always preoccupied with a lot of details pertaining rules, order, organization, or schedules to a point where other key aspects of an activity are ignored. Dedicated to high work productivity ignoring interruption by social events such as friends’ day out (Shows anti-social behavior). The long hours spent in office do not account for the financial necessity. When it comes to matters of values and ethics, the individual shows excessive moral rigidity, a behavior that is not accounted for by either religious of cultural leaders. The person gains interest in useless and old things that have no monetary or sentimental value. Always wants tasks completed according to personal preferences. Treatment Treatment of people suffering from obsessive personal disorder is a challenging aspect in the healthcare and for psychologists. Individual suffering from the disorder have difficulties adapting to the new environments posing a great challenge to therapists. In addition, practitioners administering treatments to these people should make them develop the ability to work with others in all circumstances irrespective of their status in the society. Clinicians have not had much success in treatment of obsessive personality disorder using the many techniques employed today. In addition, they often face hard times treating such individuals especially when the disorder is combined with other illness. Researchers have carried out many studies on the best treatments to offer to these people but none of them has been approved because different sufferers have different approaches to treatments offered. Different studies have presented varying therapies for the treatment of obsessive personal disorder (Wilberg & Karterud, 2008; 111). Individuals seek a lot of skills for treating items that disturb in life, but the skills might be limited. Treatment for obsessive personality disorder aims at shielding the sufferer from potential stress and emotional difficulties among other problems. Most disorder treatments focus on short-time therapy aimed at relieving common symptoms and support the new coping mechanism introduced. Long-term therapies are mostly expensive and above the knowledge of common psychologists. However, the basic construction of this disorder makes it resist most induced changes in the life of an individual. Psychologists recommend clinicians and medical practitioners to use the short-term therapy in cases where the patient’s current situation accepts the induced changes. Options that fail to work are always reinforced with additional skills (Samuels et al, 2000). Another perspective used in treatment of the disorder is the use of social relationships also reinforced with other set of skills. Social relationship should come with strong; appealing personal relationships while the sufferer is given time to examine the harmful relationship. Such therapies aim at making an individual try and have feeling states that encourages interactions and positive emotions. According to Wilberg & Karterud (2008), variety of techniques finds use in the following therapy. Firstly, the patient must be given a feeling of identification that introduces the start of each therapy. The feeling of identification provides the patient with a variety of reasoning that makes them generate ideas. For example, an individual might be given homework of writing different feelings experienced in life. On the other hand, clinicians and medical practitioners should not provide therapies that lead patients away from describing situations, daily happenings or events. People who suffer from obsessive personality disorder value a lot their emotional states. A treatment therapy should include assignments of descriptive situations faced by the patient in order to place him or her in the normal thinking situation. The following home therapies have been used from time to time, but some people prefer hospitalization to home-based therapies. Although hospitalization is a rear treatment for obsessive personality disorder, it also accelerates the rate of behavioral change in affected victims. Hospitalization is recommended for victims facing severe stressing life events that introduction of regular therapy activities would lead to the person causing harms. Hospitalization is also recommended when the obsessive behavior of victims hinders them from performing usual activities, making them paralyzed and the only option is hospital admission. Medications are also another form of treatment for obsessive personality disorder patients. Medical practitioners and health specialists do not recommend the following method most often because unless a patient suffers from Axis I disorder in combination. Chemists have introduced newer medication prescriptions like Prozac and SRRI. The following medications have been approved for treating the obsessive personality disorder and have proven to provide some relief to patients who have tried them. On the other hand, clinicians discourage long-term use of the drugs because they introduce dangerous side effects. Another alternative treatment method used for victims of obsessive personality disorder is the self-help treatment method. The following methods are often not practiced by many because they are only used by psychological professionals. Self-help technique uses support groups who carryout monthly checks on patients in a way of gaining emotional and social support through the community. The groups also work in collaboration with family members in ensuring the patient gains independence and stability through social community support. The world is full of many support groups that devote their operations to assisting obsessive personality disorder victims through sharing their experiences and feelings. Disorder patients who do not benefit from the above therapies or medications opt for self-help treatment method. Prevention Psychology is involved in the behavioral and mental illness prevention and making the society aware of the prevention measures through various promotions. The health care delivery system’ aim is the prevention of diseases through promotion of a good lifestyle instead of looking for solutions to the already excising problems. Psychologists play an important role in educating the society about mental illness and behavioral issues through application of their knowledge and skills by assisting people modify their behaviors to reduce the incidences of diseases and illness. Psychologists provide a variety of mental health services, which include; Severe and Chronic Mental Disorders; Situational Depression or Anxiety; Phobias; neuroses; Psychosomatic Illness; and Alzheimer’s disease (American Psychological Association, 2011). Obsessive personality disorder can only be prevented through the action of parents. Parents contribute a lot to the occurrence of the disorder in their children depending on the type of child bring up. Firstly, parents should not use harsh words while addressing their children in order to avoid them developing fear. A good parent should use effective ways of disciplining his or her children rather than using precautions that will later affect the mental reasoning of the child. Secondly, Samuels et al claims that people suffering from obsessive personality disorder are antisocial and lack emotions (2000). In avoiding such circumstances, children at earlier age should be introduced to different types of games in order to keep their mind occupied during free times. Through engaging in gaming activities, children who face harsh moments at home will have time to forget all the household stresses and learn to engage with other during recreational activities. Coping with the situation Social emotional development incorporates the ability to maintain, and initiate secure relationships with other people. Parents should not stress their children during the early stages of life to enable a child learn ways of approaching other children, negotiating issues and how to make effective communication. There are three stages of social emotional development in early childhood that can prevent obsessive personality disorder at adulthood. These includes: trusting others outside the family, gaining self-control and independency, and taking initiatives in socially acceptable ways. Improving social characteristics of a child must be put into focus by parents and guardians (Wilberg & Karterud, 2008). Self-concept is the first characteristic that can be enhanced by recognizing, and realizing the unique qualities each child possess. Attention must be paid to the child’s nature to avoid the development of obsessive characters. Secondly, self-confidence is very significant. It gives a child internal worth making it easy for the child to face challenges and eliminate a sense of fear that triggers obsessive personality disorder. Lack of self-confidence makes the child focus on failure instead of success making a child want to grow to be always a perfect person. Self-esteem is another vital characteristic. A person’s self-esteem can be boosted by doing the following. Complimenting an individual more often, showing appreciation, encouraging an individual to make choices, listening to a child while they are giving their opinion, and encouraging them to try challenging captivities. Following the following aspects will promote a child’s social growth to a responsible adult. Showing respect to a child’s decision and encouraging competence in a child can also enhance social growth and assist in preventing personality disorders. In addition, the environment must be appropriate for a person’s social growth by making a child feel secure and safe. Moreover, the environment should encourage exploration of relationships with adults and peers in order to eliminate fear for seniors. Finally, social emotional growth being a fundamental part in a child’s growth must be handled with a lot of care. Parents and teachers have a large role to play in this by following what has been discussed above. Conclusion Psychologists play a great role in the life in the life of human beings through provision of relevant information concerning various disorders affecting people. The above discussion will act as a lesson to parents who mistreat their children because it provides a general lesson for all. In addition, the discussion has provided more information on the obsessive personality disorder, its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and prevention. The given recommendations will act as a way of teaching people not to engage in activities that might trigger this disorder. Moreover, people who have already given up because their loved ones are victims of personality disorder should not give up because psychologists have provided effective methods of curing the disorder. References Cooper, S. (2000). Obsessional thinking- a defense against loss. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 16 (4), 413-423. Crawford, T. N., Cohen, P., Johnson, J. G., Kasen, S., First, M. B., Gordon, K., et al. (2005). Self-Reported Personality Disorder in the Children in the Community Sample: Convergent and Prospective Validity in Late Adolescence and Adulthood. Journal of Personality Disorders, 19(1), 39. Lenzenweger, M. F., Lane, M. C., Loranger, A. W., & Kessler, R. C. (2007). DSM-IV Personality Disorders In The National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Biological Psychiatry, 62(6), 558. Merrett, C. and Easton, S. (2008). 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