General Personality Disorder

Symptoms

• An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or more) of the following areas:

1. Cognition (i.e., ways of perceiving and interpreting self, other people, and events).

2. Affectivity (i.e., the range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of emotional response).

3. Interpersonal functioning.

4. Impulse control.

• The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations.

• The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

• The pattern is stable and of long duration, and its onset can be traced back at least to adolescence or early adulthood.

• The enduring pattern is not better explained as a manifestation or consequence of another mental disorder.

• The enduring pattern is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition (e.g., head trauma).