Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) is a mental disorder that makes a person disregard the feelings of others, engage in lying, acting out violent, and breaking the law without any form of remorse. The recent past has seen increased attention on this disorder due to the number of serial killers who were found to sufferer from this condition. America's most infamous, ruthless serial killers like Ted Bundy, John Waynegacy, and Charles Manson are just a few that suffered from antisocial personality disorder condition. This shows the significance of studying this condition for the purposes of decreasing the numbers in prison and rates of violent crimes. Handling this condition calls for increased deliveru of rehabilitative services, mental illness treatment, and ways to educate parents and teachers on signs to look for in youth to diagnose antisocial personality disorder at an early age. This is interesting to me because I have often heard in dicussions that people should have known that something was wrong with these serial killers and that they were bad people. When in fact most of them were charming, considered good people to there community but seemed shy. While actually they were suffering from antisocial personality disorder.
Introduction
Antisocial Personality Disorder as seen mainly comes in form of an ingrained pattern of behavior that an individual exhibits in regards to deisregard of people feelinsg and rights. According to Wolman (2009), the victims of this dirorder have a tendency to disregard and violate the rights and feelings of people around them. APD is one of the key personality disorders, where a personality disorder refers to anan enduring pattern of personal behavior, whichbdeviates largely from the expectation of the individual or people within a given culture. In this case, the behaviors under this personality come out as pervasive and inflexible. It has been established that this personality disorder commonly begins to appear in a person in the onset of their adolescent or during their ealy adulthood season of their life. The focus of this research would be to investigate this disorder to establish its causes, impacts and the possible remedies to it.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Analysis and Discussion
Wolman (2009) defines APD as a disorder that is manifested through certain behavior patterns, which are contrary to the expectations of a person in a society. It is mainly exemplified through increased disregard for, as well as, the violation of the rights that other people around the victim should be accorded. As a result of the nature of this disorder, it is critical to understand the characteritcis of the victims of APD for the purposes of facilitating early diagnosis of the same. However, as at now, the diagnosis tests of persons suspected to have this disorder is given to persons who are above the age 18. It is only offered to persons who are below the age of 18 in the event that the person has a history of potraying some symptoms of the disorder before one gets to age 15.
Morán (2001) notes that the symptoms of the APD may vary in sereness from one victim to another. For some people, the antisocial personality disorder cane said to be psychopathic or sociopathic. A person is said to have this type of APD in the event the behavior of the individual are more egregious, harmful, or dangerous. On the other end, some of the victims of this personality disorder are tagged to suffer from Sociopathy . This is the condition that occurs when the PAD victim is largely affected through something that is severely wrong with their conscience . This ios as contrasted to psychopathy , which is characterized as a complete lack of conscience by the victims in regards to others who are around him or her. The victimswitgh this constellation of symptoms are described as "stone cold" to the rights of others.
As a consequene of the nature of this condition, a number of Complications may arise from it and this includes imprisonment, drug abuse, and alcoholism among others. McCallum (2011) explains that people with anti-social personality disorder may lead a life that would make it an uphill task for people to recognize that they suffer from it. For instance, persons with this disorder may seem charming on the surface to many people who may not get inside of their lives. While they may act charming on the surface, they are likely to be irritable, aggressive and on many occasions irresponsible. As a result of being irritable and unstable in controlling their feelinsg and actions, they have a tendency to report somatic complaints. Carefulness in observing the way they act becomes critical in determining their cause of action as they carry on with their life.
Indeed, as Forrest (2014) writes that many of the victims of this disorder may tend to demonstrate manipulative tendencies. These include the numerous cases of somatic complaints as well as suicide threats. The consequence of the numerous manipulative tendencies may make it a challenge for one to ascertain whether they mean what they are saying or are just lying. Handling such persons would need the people around them to atleast understand the core symptoms of the dirsorder, so that it becomes easier to recoemmend for further tests ( Black, 2019). Early testing of the disorder among the suspected victims would be useful in helping the process of rehabilitating sucn persons before they harm others or self. This apprpoach is critical considering the dangers that victims of antisocial personality disorder pose to the lives of people living around them. So much is at stake for people living around APD persons due to the danger they pose in terms of harming others or even killing.
There are other characteritics that have been associated with persons who are victims to this disorder. For instance, Clarkin (2010) notes that antisocial personality disorder is more prone among males than the case are with females. In this light, males have proven to have the highest prevalence of antisocial personality disorder iand this is more especially among males who abuse alcohol or drugs or those who are imprisoned. Victims of of this disorder show no guilt or remorse for their behavior and the consequences thereof. Many of the victims violate the laws of the land and engage in violent crimes or take on impulsive violent behaviors. As a result of these behavioral trends, these persons cannot fulfll their responsibilities as regards their family, school, or work.
Editore (2014) lists a number of symptoms and signs of the antisocial personality disorder such as extreme disregard of the right or wrong. Persons suffering from this disorder are not cognizant and responsive to doing the right or wrong thing. Secondly, persons suffering from this disorder have also been found to engage in ersistent lying or deceit. They take on persistent lying or deceit for the purposes of exploiting others around them. Thirdly, victims of the antisocial personality disorder are commonly callous, cynical, and disrespectful of others. They have tendencies not to recognize or fail to recognize values and dignity of other people around them. This is seen through engaging in talks or acts that are direspecful to the people who are close or interact with them.
In addition, other key characteristics associated with AP disorder victims are common use of charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or personal pleasure. In many cases, they would manipulate others as well as situations around for the purposes of personal pleasure. Rotgers (2005) brings out other two major characteritcis/traits of the disease and these include Arrogance, an extreme sense of superiority as well as being extremely opinionated. APD victims can be arrogant to the core and this greatly affects the relationships they make with others. The trait of being extremely opinionated is also a major item that characterizes many victims of antisocial persponality disorder. The second characteristic raised byRotgers (2005) is the recurring problems they have with the law in regards to offending as well as criminal behaviors.
The other major symptoms of this personality disorder include severe hostility, high levels of irritability, agitation, aggression, lack of empathy and maintaining abusive relationships with others. As a result, it becomes important to diagonize the problem and finds the treatment for the same. According to Gabbard (2014), the treatment of the APD among its victims may involve a number of items. First, the treatment may be challenging by the fact that the symptoms of this disorder have been provem to peak when a person hits their early 20’s. However, after the condition has been diagonized, it becomes easier to deal with the situation and help the victim go through the rehabilitation process.
The main treatment for the disorder is through psychotherapy, or talk therapy. This is the most recommended treatnmentfor antisocial personality disorder. In this case, the victim of the disorder would need to be assiated through being linked to a terapists. A therapist would play a major role in helping a person manage negative behaviors and build interpersonal skills that may be absent. The primary and first goal of the therapy session is often to reduce impulsive behaviors. Reducing impulsive behaviors is always of great importance for such behaviors can lead to physical harm or arrest of the person by law enforcement officers ( Coid, 2013). Allowing the victim to see clinical therapists on mental health plays a major role in the initial stages of helping the person.
Conclusion
Conclusively, family therapy might be a useful option in educating family members on the need to improve communication, and work with the victim in the period of rehabilitation. It could be a challenging process to cope with victims of this disorder at the family level. On this account, family members play a major role in regards to helping the victim connect with the reality of the need to change and become better. In the process of facilitating the treatment, it is important to address any co-occurring disorders. These may include items such as borderline personality disorder, hyperactivity disorder, and impulse control disorders.
References
Black, D. (2019). Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial Personality Disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coid, J. (2013). Psychopathic and antisocial personality disorders: treatment and research issues. NewYork, NY: Gaskell.
Clarkin, J. (2010). Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Personality Disorders. NewYork, NY: American Psychiatric Pub.
Editore, S. (2014). Antisocial personality disorder. Chicago: SICS Editore.
Forrest G. (2014). Chemical Dependency and Antisocial Personality Disorder: Psychotherapy and Assessment Strategies. NewYork, NY: Psychology Press.
Gabbard, O. (2014). Gabbard's Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders. NewYork: American Psychiatric Pub.
McCallum, D. (2011). Personality and Dangerousness: Genealogies of Antisocial Personality Disorder. NewYork, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Morán, P. (2001). Intervening to prevent antisocial personality disorder. NewYork, NY: Home Office.
Rotgers, F. (2005). Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Practitioner's Guide to Comparative Treatments. London: Springer Publishing Company.
Wolman, B. (2009). Antisocial Behavior: Personality Disorders from Hostility to Homicide. NewYork, NY: Prometheus Books.
