Mental Health Promotion - Personality Disorders

MENTAL HEALTH PROMOTION

The treatment of individuals with a personality disorder often focuses on mood stabilization, decreasing impulsivity, and developing social and relationship skills. Hayward, Slade, and Moran (2006) studied clients with personality disorders in terms of clients’ perceptions of their unmet needs. They found that clients perceived unmet needs in five areas: self-care (keeping clean and tidy); sexual expres-sion (dissatisfaction with sex life); budgeting (managing daily finances); psychotic symptoms; and psychological dis-tress. Although psychotic symptoms and psychological distress are usually addressed by health-care providers, the other three areas are not. This suggests that dealing with those areas in the treatment of a client might result in a greater sense of well-being and improved health.

Children who have a greater number of “protective fac-tors” are less likely to develop antisocial behavior as adults. These protective factors include school commitment or importance of school, parent or peer disapproval of antiso-cial behavior, and being involved in a religious commu-nity. Interestingly, the study found that children at risk for abuse and those not at risk were less likely to have antisocial behavior as adults if these protective factors were present in their environment. Children lacking these protective factors are much more likely to develop antiso-cial behavior as adults (Cohen, Chen, Gordon, Johnson, Brook, & Kasen, 2008).