Ask the Therapist
Mixed Personality Disorder
I have recently been diagnosed with mixed personality disorder,
but I haven't any idea what that means or what that is. It would be greatly
appreciated if you could explain to me what exactly that is.
"Mixed Personality Disorder" is a colloquial expression for Personality Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) that I hadn't heard in years. I remembered it last night after I had written back to you. My apologies for giving misinformation.
What it means is that you (or the person who was diagnosed) are suffering from an array of symptoms that fit a variety of personality disorder criteria, but don't meet the complete criteria for a single pathology. That sounds kind of scary, but it's really a "1 from column A, 2 from column B" kind of thing. So, you may be experiencing the paranoia associated with Paranoid Personality Disorder, but not the delusions and morbid distrust, along with the impulsive emotionality of a Histrionic Personality Disorder and the object rage of the Borderline Personality or the reactive rage of Complex Post Traumatic Stress...but you don't meet enough of the other criteria for any of these to be a complete diagnosis.
Many times a therapist willl give an NOS diagnosis because they need something to show the insurance company, but there's nothing really concrete other than the patient is a little "off". It's also what I call a lazy diagnosis because it allows the therapist to sit back and say, "OK, this person is a little wacky [shrug], whatever..." and not really work toward a quantifiable statement. I am not saying that this is what your therapist is doing, but you might be well served to have him or her tell you to which symptoms from which categories s/he was referring.
This is a list of the Personality Disorders, with their Axes and Clusters. If you do a search for the DSM IV TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4, Text Revision), you can look at the individual criteria for each and go through them with your therapist.
Paranoid Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster A)
Schizoid Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster A)
Schizotypal Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster A)
Anti-Social Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster A)
Borderline Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster B)
Histrionic Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster B)
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster B)
Avoidant Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster C)
Dependent Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster C)
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (Axis II, Cluster C)
You can find information
on Mixed Bi-Polar in any good reference on depression. The Mood
Disorders: A Practical Guide (Practical Guides in Psychiatry) by
S. Nassir Ghaemi
is a good one.
