Recognising personality disorder: The past in the present

Introduction

We are all shaped as personalities by the experiences we have as children. You can probably think of adults who you knew or were close to when you were a child who have had a big impact on who you are today. You can probably also remember some major events or upsets from your childhood that have affected how you are today.

In this section we will be looking at the effect that the past can have on the present for people with personality disorders. Experience has shown that they have often had particularly difficult or traumatic experiences in their childhoods. The examples that you looked at in the previous section bear this out.

The statistics shown here also make a strong connection between past experiences and present diagnoses of personality disorder:

• Many people diagnosed with BPD have histories of severe childhood abuse or neglect. About 2-4% of the general population have BPD; 75% of these are female.
• Abuse is particularly common in offenders diagnosed with a personality disorder, 81.3% report significant physical or sexual abuse (or both).
• People diagnosed with personality disorder tend to have experienced more separations in childhood and had more experience of institutional care as children.
• People diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder often come from dysfunctional families where discipline is inconsistent and unpredictable, moving between the extremes of excessive punishment and non-involvement and neglect.