Personality Disorders Awareness Network (PDAN)

Personality Disorders Awareness Network (PDAN) promotes a receptive, authentic and civil atmosphere for comments and users. Empathic and in-depth discussions and debates are encouraged to learn and express mutual support for fellow readers and contributors. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinion regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion or agreement with other community members, the author of the post or staff members as long as those opinions are respectful and constructively add to the conversation.

PDAN prides itself in providing information with a great diversity of content styles while we pay particular attention to the way the content is expressed. We summarize this by saying:

"Our key communication challenges are not so much in WHAT we say, but HOW we say it."

PDAN IS AN INFORMATION CHANNEL, and NOT A SUPPORT GROUP:
PDAN's Facebook pages are information and discussion channels, and not support groups. PDAN is about awareness and prevention of personality disorders. Many people in our audience are family members of people with personality disorders, and therefore they may have a very different perspective on these mental conditions than those who actually suffer from them.

PDAN sometimes share content and allows comments that some people may find disturbing. If you do, please mention it to us by contacting our pages. PDAN staff will then look at the comments you find disturbing. PDAN is a volunteer-managed community. We appreciate your help in improving our pages.

PDAN may not necessarily change every comment that people report as disturbing. People who are unable to see the viewpoint of family members, should look for support groups, at least as a complement of using PDAN’s pages.

The same applies for family members. PDAN will sometime empathize with people who have personality disorders in ways that family members could find hard to understand. PDAN aims to create an atmosphere of radical acceptance and validation, which are two qualities we encourage you to practice personally.

If you feel you need a support group for borderline personality disorder, we recommend groups such as GroupBPD https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupbpd
or other pages such as Borderline Personality Disorder Community https://www.facebook.com/borderline.personality.disorder.community
or BPD Pieces of Me https://www.facebook.com/piecesofme2/


There are 10 defined types of Personality Disorders grouped into three clusters, and a couple of other general types of PDs.

Cluster A (odd or eccentric disorders)
- Paranoid personality disorder: characterized by a pattern of irrational suspicion and mistrust of others, interpreting motivations as malevolent.
- Schizoid personality disorder: lack of interest and detachment from social relationships, apathy, and restricted emotional expression.
- Schizotypal personality disorder: a pattern of extreme discomfort interacting socially, and distorted cognitions and perceptions.

Cluster B (dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders)
- Antisocial personality disorder: a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, lack of empathy, bloated self-image, manipulative and impulsive behavior.
- Borderline personality disorder: pervasive pattern of instability in relationships, self-image, identity, behavior and affects often leading to self-harm and impulsivity.
- Histrionic personality disorder: pervasive pattern of attention-seeking behavior and excessive emotions.
- Narcissistic personality disorder: a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.

Cluster C (anxious or fearful disorders)
- Avoidant personality disorder: pervasive feelings of social inhibition and inadequacy, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation.
- Dependent personality disorder: pervasive psychological need to be cared for by other people.
- Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: characterized by rigid conformity to rules, perfectionism, and control to the point of satisfaction and exclusion of leisurely activities and friendships (not the same as and quite different from obsessive-compulsive disorder).

Other personality disorders (personality disturbance due to the direct effects of a medical condition.)
- Other specified personality disorder – symptoms characteristic of a personality disorder but fails to meet the criteria for a specific disorder, with the reason given.
- Personality disorder not otherwise specified

For information on personality disorders, please see: http://www.pdan.org/what-are-personality-disorders/
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorders

For recent medical information, please see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5)
www.dsm5.org
or World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (WHO-ICD 10) http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2015/en#/F60