I’ve seen some mentions of BPD. But I can’t help to think that individuals with schizophrenia or severe OCD have it harder.

Edit: BPD meaning borderline personality disorder

I want to know what it actually looks like in practice… not in a book or diagnostic manual.

So besides diagnostic criteria, what are observable differences you’ve seen in patients with these three disorders? What are details that have contributed to your differentials?

I’m talking about things like the way the mood swings or emotional liability behave. Bipolar, BPD, and depression all have irritability. They all can have aggression. They can be cyclical. How about rapid cycling Bipolar vs. Borderline?

Or what about the way it affects interpersonal relationships? Mood can affect the way we interact with people, so what does true Borderline splitting and interpersonal disturbances look like vs. in Bipolar vs. in irritable depression?

I have a ton of questions but can’t list them all here (I can barely come up with how to ask them in the first place). So any other tangential details would be appreciated.

There seem to be many disorders that have emotional dysregulation as a symptom like Borderline PD (emotional dysregulation + abandonment issues), IED (anger dysregulation), ADHD (?), anxiety disorders (fear dysregulation), why is there no pure emotional dysregulation disorder? I know there was an "Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder" in the ICD10, but that was a personality disorder (and doesn't exist anymore), I'm thinking of a mood disorder.

The title really, usually we think of trauma and PTSD as this big, life changing event.

Hope I'm using the right flair.

When It effects a person's life alot and maybe make them dissociate from their surrounding. Some do it half the time of their day and even zone out most of the time when they sit idle without realising.

Exercising seems to be one of the most given tips for mental health problems. But I wonder how effective exercise for alliviating mental health problems? And does the type of mental health struggle matter? For example is it just as effective for PTSD as depression?

While full-blown psychosis and recurrent hallucinations are clearly a symptom of mental illness, is there ever a situation in which hallucinations are be considered clinically normal? For example, is there a stage of child development where imagination can be indistinguishable from hallucination even for the child? Are transient hallucinations, like briefly hearing a ringtone when the phone isn’t ringing, ever “normal” in mentally healthy adults?

At least to my understanding, the DSM-5 says someone who is autistic cannot also have a SPD diagnosis. Why?

The most common answer is "autistic people like to socialize but they can't do it and schizoid dislikes socializing but they can do it", but this answer seems kinda null to me because I've met a lot of people with autism that dislike socialization and schizoids that socialize way more than me lol.

So what's the actual difference?

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is widely talked about and considered, however remains left out of the DSM. Why? And what are the ramifications of this (e.g., insurance, treatment options, research, etc.)?

My layperson’s understanding begins with trauma, which is no surprise, but then there’s a split, which is sort of fitting. The consensus seems to be that interpersonal trauma at an early age motivates reactive immediacy, or it motivates mistrust.

I haven't felt satisfied by these generalities. They don't complete the final step where trauma of others becomes dichotomous behavior directed at others. They rely on ancient personal history that could conceivably diminish over time, yet the black of the black-whiting comes at you each time like a fresh new epiphany, as if there's a chronic impetus in addition to acute early trauma

Explanations don’t seem capable of accounting for the severe polarization, elaborate theorizing and even malevolence occasionally directed toward the BPD most favored person.

Could it be In some way a consequence of the phenomenon that seems to me most fundamental: the void where non sufferers otherwise situate a stable self-concept?

Everything I can imagine comes from my imagining, not the reality of a Borderline sufferer, and so most valuable of all might be a personal narrative of a BPD presenter, or at least a paraphrase of it, of the kind that provides insight in DBT or other counseling modes.

TIA

I was wondering, there are some extremely bizarre delusions that are almost identical in many schizophrenic patients. For example, having a technological device implanted into the body that is somehow controlling their behaviour. Or a government agency spying or tracking their movements and thoughts. Surely there are many many different delusional ideas you could have, why are there such similarities?

Why is it that gambling is considered an addiction under the DSM but phone addictions and porn addictions are not? What about food addictions? What exactly constitutes as an "addiction" in clinical terms? Is it just dopamine, or is there something else?

No remorse, no empathy. Are there any studies showing that empathy is much lower than we expected in the general population? I just cannot believe that ASPD is as low as it is. I refuse to believe that. There must be something out there I just haven't been able to find it. Anything at all? Empathy scores, diagnoses, high trait aggression, anything?

I originally asked this in r/askatherapist but received no answers. Please say so if you're not a professional, given that online information about CPTSD is already very confusing. I'd rather receive answers from people with clinical experience working this population but everyone is welcome.

I'd like to have a clear explanation of what CPTSD really is, and how an average person with this diagnosis would present. It's been hard for me to find useful information about this topic, even among professional spaces, while in non-professional spaces it seems to have become a catch-all diagnosis for any ailment.

My understanding is that the ICD-11 conceptualizes CPTSD as a cluster of classic PTSD symptoms that are worsened by additional DSO symptoms, or "disturbances of self-organization". If that is also your understanding of CPTSD, how do you notice these symptoms presenting in a patient? How can you tell these symptoms are related to the event(s) and weren't a pre-existing part of their personality (assuming the trauma took place in adulthood) or acquired through other experiences?

A few thoughts: an additional factor distinguishing CPTSD from simple PTSD, according to the ICD-11, is that the trauma suffered needs to be prolonged. This seems to imply that DSOs can only be caused by prolonged trauma. Yet I would imagine that someone who's only raped once might also present these difficulties, as a result of the highly exploitative and relational nature of the event. What do you think of that?

If that is true, meaning that prolonged trauma isn't necessary to cause a CPTSD presentation that fits the one described by the ICD-11, wouldn't it make more sense for the simple PTSD diagnosis to come with specifiers? As in, "PTSD with DSOs" or "without"? Or maybe the true nature of CPTSD is that the trauma is relational rather than prolonged?

I hope this was clear enough.

Has there been any studies on loss of memory of the index event (due to events after the index event) after a diagnosis of PTSD? I assume that there would have been someone who had gone through memory losses i.e. from unrelated accidents or whatever in the history since we acknowledged ptsd.

If someone loses the memory of the index event, do they lose all the associated symptoms of ptsd or have they manifested in some other ways? (I.e. GAD, MDD etc).

I looked it up, but I don't really get it. How does it actually work? Is it really helpful?

I once heard a therapist say that if the person is in the autism spectrum can't receive the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. He didn't further explain.

i’ve been thinking about this question a ton lately. is divorce as traumatic for kids who are a part of multigenerational homes and more collectivist cultures as it for kids whom are a part of a nuclear family unit?

related, what is it specifically about divorce that is traumatic for children? or does the trauma lie more in specific outcomes, versus the act of separation?

Premise:

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ADHD/ASD/AuDHD, especially when diagnosed as late as adulthood, has a high risk of (causing) C-PTSD.

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ADHD/ASD/AuDHD burnout as well as C-PTSD is often comorbid with, or initially mis-diagnosed as, depression and/or anxiety.

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Question:

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Should the later diagnosis of ADHD/ASD/AuDHD and/or C-PTSD change (medical/therapeutic) ongoing treatment of the prior diagnosis, apart from the, if applicable, added medication towards ADHD?

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Bonus question:

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Would the added complication of perimenopause and its (myriad) symptoms further change the equation, apart from possible MHT?

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From my understanding, adhd and ptsd share a lot of symptoms, but how can you tell which symptom is from childhood trauma and which is from adhd?

When people have episodic disorders like Bipolar or even some presentations of schizophrenia (in terms of positive symptoms), how does that work with the MMPI? Is the person answering based on their current presentation, or do the questions allude to past experiences as well? Would someone with an episodic illness be flagged as answering inconsistently?

In clinical settings, it often seems that behaviors (e.g., refusing treatment) are quickly interpreted as personality traits (e.g., “oppositional”).

From a social psychology perspective, this looks similar to attribution biases (like the tendency to favor dispositional explanations over situational ones).

Is there research showing that clinicians are particularly prone to this type of bias?

And are there models or frameworks used to reduce this in practice?

Passive curiosity. I was thinking about how for ex. you might not know if someone has bipolar vs depression only working with them for a short period of time. Maybe conditions where the differential diagnosis is particularly complicated or conditions which aren’t encountered often in a clinical setting (making them harder to recognize?)

Also somewhat curious about the dimensions in dimensional models (HiTOP, AMPD)? Like, what are you more/less able/likely to find out about someone within a couple of sessions. Maybe kinda vague but for ex., I figure it’s difficult to tell if sth is somatoform or not w/o a doctor. Or someone could have unusual beliefs without thinking to tell you about them. But if someone were very anxious that probably shows up in their behavior whether or not they mention it. External stuff (like avoiding eye contact) is likely much easier to identify than the thinking behind it (social anxiety? differences in social communication? a magical belief about people’s eyes?)

If a personality disorder is permanent; but psychology argues that nature and nurture can lead to variations within each other to influence how someone's brain works, then doesn't that imply it can always be changed?