Personality Disorders
First, what is Personality?
Personality is the sum of a person’s distinctive character, behavior, attitudes, the way one carries him/herself, and the way one communicates. Personality is often established at a young age [identifiable at age 7] and is an enduring pattern of behavior.
Basically, Personality is the combination of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that makes you unique. It’s the way you view, understand and relate to the outside world, as well as how you see yourself.
Defining a Healthy Personality:
“Healthy personality is manifested by individuals who have been able to gratify their basic needs through acceptable behavior such that their own personality is no longer a problem to their self. They can take their self more or less for granted and devote energies and thoughts to socially meaningful interests and problems beyond security, or lovability, or status” (Sidney Jourard, 1963).
So then, what is a Personality Disorder ?
“Personality Disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectation of the individual’s culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and can lead to distress or impairment” (APA, 2000)
Since Personality forms during childhood, it is shaped through an interaction of two factors:
Some Strange and Rare Psychological Disorders
1. Trichotillomania is where the sufferer is overcome by the powerful urge to pull out their own hair. This is includes eyelashes, scalp and facial hair, and even pubic hair. Where the person also consumes the hair, it can lead to something called “Rapunzel Syndrome” (intestinal problems caused by the body’s inability to digest human hair).
2. Foreign Accent Syndrome is usually the result of experiencing a stroke or severe brain injury. It results in the person speaking with a different accent – and one that they haven’t been exposed to personally. For example, an American will speak with a British accent or a Brit may start to sound as if they’re from New York.
3. Genital Retraction Syndrome is exactly what the name implies. It’s the irrational belief that the genitals or breasts are physically shrinking, and will disappear inside the person’s body, and will lead to their death.
4. Windigo Psychosis is where the person is fighting a constant craving for human flesh. At the same time, he or she is also afraid that they will become a cannibal.
5. Body Integrity Identity Disorder is rare and difficult to comprehend. It is where the individual is convinced that their life would be significantly better if they were amputees – hence they feel the urge to have a healthy limb removed. However, this usually leads to a psychiatric diagnosis and not the removal of their limb!
“Non-feminine behaviour in females has always been regarded as a pathology. And because all but the most broken and brainwashed women exhibit non-feminine behaviour in some form or other, it has led to countless women being hospitalized, drugged, lobotomized, restrained and so forth in psychiatric hospitals. By femininity, I am of course referring to: heterosexuality, saintly motherhood, not talking back to your husband, not having the audacity to believe you are a human being, repressing your creative energy, not refusing sex with your unattractive husband, keeping your hair long, wearing make-up, finding fulfillment in cleaning the toilet and a myriad of other oppressive behavioural traits imposed upon women by society in order that they fit into the little slots that patriarchy has designed for them.”
—The Case for the Sanity of Women
Why I am fucking enraged that I saw a commercial for ABILIFY in a doctor's office last week
1. The commercial urged consumers who were already on antidepressants to ask their doctor about Abilify. Basically: “Is your antidepressant not working fast or well enough? Ask your doctor about ABILIFY!!!!!”
***EDIT*** Here is the actual commercial I saw on the waiting room TV.
2. Abilify is a dangerous and serious antipsychotic mostly used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression. They also like to use it “to control irritability and violent behavior in Autistic children who are at least 6 years old.” As an Autistic adult, I find this fucking disturbing.
3. The side effects of Abilify include: heart failure, sudden death, pneumonia, hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), dehydration and heat exhaustion, significant weight gain (50 or more pounds), and tardive dyskinesia (uncontrollable muscle movements) that can become PERMANENT. That’s not all of them, those are just the worst ones.
4. The reason they’re trying to promote Abilfy so hard and SPECIFICALLY for conditions that PROBABLY DO NOT WARRANT IT, is because their patent is ABOUT TO EXPIRE and despite the fact that they have been able to keep extending it since it was first patented in 2002, Otsuka holdings/Bristol Meyers Squibb co. stands to lose 13% of their total revenue, a.k.a. 2.76 BILLION DOLLARS if generic Abilify becomes available. So they are promoting the shit out of it as a “antidepressant enhancer”.
5. My ex (who I was with for 11 years) was schizophrenic, and Abilify was one of the medications they tried. The tardive dyskinesia and weight gain started right away and the medication was changed. A lot of the time, psychiatrists will NOT tell you about side effects. I have been put on medications that caused disassociation, vertigo so bad I ended up in the ER and on meds to control the vertigo, ones that made my teeth fall out, erratic behavior and lack of impulse control, and an endless host of other problems. I wasn’t warned about most of them. A lot of them were for conditions I didn’t even HAVE.
I’m not saying that Abilify is bad.
Is it better than Haldol and/or Thorazine? Almost certainly. Should it be an option for people who need those options? OF COURSE. YES. DEFINITELY.
DO YOU KNOW WOULD WOULD BE HELPFUL TO THOSE PEOPLE? HAVE A GENERIC ALTERNATIVE TO A DRUG THAT COSTS ABOUT 700 DOLLARS FOR A MONTH’S SUPPLY.
700 FUCKING DOLLARS
700
FUCKING
DOLLARS
A
MONTH.
And the people who most need Abilify are the least likely to BE ABLE TO PAY FOR IT.
America.
