To be angry with people assuming personality disorder?

[Gingerkittykat]

I've seen three threads today where various posters have questioned whether or not somebody talked about has some kind of personality disorder because they have behaved badly.

Personality disorders are serious mental health conditions, a lot develop as a result of trauma. Those living with a personality disorder carry horrible stigma about their diagnosis as well as dealing with the symptoms.

All the armchair psychiatrists on here diagnosing a stranger with personality disorders does is increase the stigma. A lot of people are manipulative, attention seeking, insensitive etc without a disorder. Equating those bad behaviours with a PD is just perpetuating stigma.

I've known a lot of people with a diagnosis of a personality disorder, and on the whole they are great people dealing with a lot of problems. Yes, they can have challenging behaviour at times but deserve to live without the extra stigma.

It's not dissimilar to people saying they're "sooooo OCD" when actually they're just particular. If you spent your whole life getting pissed off every time someone minimised a serious mental health condition your blood pressure would be through the roof.

Yanbu. My daughter has EUPD and she is the nicest, most selfless and gentle person you could ever hope to meet. In fact, her very sweet and passive personality is the chief symptom and means she is often taken advantage of by less scrupulous people.

I have EUPD (BPD it used to be called) and I just want to say THANK YOU for this post

There are lots of different types of personality disorder and the symptoms vary. For example Antisocial PD presents very differently to EUPD, yet they are both personality disorders and both serious mental health conditions. Narcissistic PD and Dependent PD are less well known as people suffering from them are less likely to seek help.

People can also have PD traits without a diagnosis. Lots of people have an undiagnosed PD.

EUPD is perhaps the most well known as it's associated with self harm, suicide and risk taking behaviours, so people are more likely to be admitted to hospital or come into contact with a mental health team.

I've met some lovely people with EUPD. Sadly it does get a bad press. In MH services it's often diagnosed when a patient repeatedly self harms, ODs, displays attention seeking behaviours (eg mimicking psychosis or medication seeking behaviours) and struggles to manage their emotions, yet doesn't fit any other disorder like PTSD, clinical depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, psychotic disorders.

I know what you mean.

There's a lot of it on here.

OP: My DM told me she didn't like my new house and I'm really upset
Reply: She's a narcissist! Go no contact!

Having a real life narcissist in the family, and having to endure the trauma, isn't something I'd wish on anyone.

I just roll my eyes and scroll by, though. Lots of people (thankfully) don't have direct experience with mental health disorders and so base their knowledge on stereotypes and anecdotes.

Also upsets me when people post thinks like “sounds like they have BPD/personality disorder...AVOID!” Like we are fucking lepers or something and undeserving of friendship or even just common human decency

Yes I agree , I was a mental health nurse so have worked with a lot of people with diagnosed personality disorders , the most annoying one on here is when people talk about someone they don't like as a Narcissist or even worse Narc .

I agree. The amount of narcissists roaming around must be huge judging by the posts on here (worked in mental health for 8 years, 5 qualified as a nurse and have only ever come across one person who fit the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder).

I detest the stigma associated with EUPD too. Even amongst professionals the stigma is huge. It's true working with people with EUPD is hard, it's tiring and the service users ask a lot of staff. But they are all still worthy of our time, care and compassion and can live a "normal" life with the right support and treatment to help manage the symptoms.

I absolutely despair of the armchair psychiatry on MN at times. There is a thread on were at the moment where multiple posters who clearly have no idea what they are talking about are labelling an 11 year old child as having a personality disorder with zero credible evidence. It's ridiculous.
Why do people feel the need to speak with such authority about things that they obviously don't understand?
I was a MH nurse for many years and working with young people with Emerging Personality Disorders was without question the most rewarding aspect of my work. I feel genuinely angry when posters imply that anyone who behaves selfishly or inappropriately must have a personality disorder, it's practically used as an insult on here and it's just so ignorant and damaging. People need to educate themselves before they go around spouting bollocks on the internet.

I hate it. I work directly with many people with diagnosed NPD and ASPD (and a few psychopaths but that isn't a PD) and it frustrates me no end when people just simply state that their MIL or whatever is a 'narc' when really she's just a bit selfish and thoughtless. It's bad to trivialise these conditions, and equally bad to do so in the context of dismissing someone because of it.

Saying someone is a narcissist is not making a diagnosis of a personality disorder though. We all have different degrees of narcissism as part of our personnality, some much more than others.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism
(and this abstract is fairly ironic considering the topic here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16618057 , apparently people with narcissistic personality traits tend to be the ones who stigmatize people with mental health problems).

It was the thread with the 11 year old boy that really annoyed me today, but it was followed by people questioning a woman on whether she had BPD because she was behaving manipulatively.

Jimjamjong - I agree with you to an extent, however I think my point still stands. Simply labeling someone as a 'narcissist' is unhelpful and most of the time untrue, given that people can tend to inflate the actions of others when they feel that they are a victim. Referring back to your wiki link, it states there that the non-clinical traits (which I'm assuming you are referring to) are criticised as presumptuous of intent and focussed on observed behaviours (and in the case of MN, I imagine very few people are psychologically/psychiatrically trained to correctly observe these behaviours in order to apply them to the traits).

Either way, I think people on here should just call a spade a spade, rather than implying any more severe labels!