Avoidant personality disorder: characteristics and clinical features

¶ … adults become susceptible to avoidant personality disorder.

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Avoidant Personality Disorder results in social constraint, feeling of insecurity and susceptibility towards criticism. Even if one want to socialize with others he is most often scared to. Being embarrassed in front of others horrifies individuals suffering from Avoidant Personality Disorders. As a result they usually withdraw themselves from social gatherings to avoid any sort of discomfort. John G. Gunderson in his article Childhood Antecedents of Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Retrospective Study outlines the risk factors and primordial exhibition of Avoidant Personality Disorders by investigating present perspective reports of social functioning and antagonistic childhood encountering.

Primitive social operative and pathological childhood experiences were investigated through a childhood experience questionnaire. It was shocking to find out that around 146 adults out of 376 patients suffered from Avoidant Personality Disorder.

Adults with AVPD reported poorer child and adolescent athletic performance, less involvement in hobbies during adolescence, and less adolescent popularity than the depressed comparison group and the other personality disorder group. Reported rates of physical and emotional abuse were higher than the depressed group, but this result was influenced by comorbid diagnoses (John G. Gunderson, Childhood Antecedents

of Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Retrospective Study).

What is even more shocking is that most children are manifested with Avoidant Personality Disorder and one of the major causes of this is abuse. Out of a population of 100% about 50% suffer from this disorder.

Hardly any thing is known about the etiology of Avoidant Personality Disorder. One cannot easily determine whether a child is suffering from this disorder or not. From this article one can analyze that personality disorders are developed through temperamental characteristics present during childhood. "There is evidence that anxious traits are familial with heritabilities of approximately 50%. Thus, one might expect that some of the core features of AVPD would be present in childhood, although not necessarily at severe enough levels to cause impairment and to constitute a disorder" (John G. Gunderson, Childhood Antecedents of Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Retrospective Study).

Reports show that around 75% patients who acquire social phobia claim that they were vulnerable to shyness during childhood. The author links this sort of generalized social disorder to Avoidant Personality Disorder. A question that arises from this hypothesis is that, how can one determine the distinctive boundary between generalize social disorder, avoidance personality disorder and shyness?

The article also examines whether individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder report their sickness during childhood. "A study by Johnson et at. 1999 showed that more AVPD criteria were met among children with a history of neglect, but not either physical or sexual abuse, compared with children without a history of abuse" (John G. Gunderson, Childhood Antecedents of Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Retrospective Study). The author concluded that adults who suffer from Avoidant Personality Disorder begin to show sign of such disorders during their childhood. There is even a high possibility that such disorders in individuals are inherited.

The study that was made by the author included patients with four types of personality disorders namely, Avoidant, schizotypal, borderline, and obsessive-compulsive. These patients were assessed through a Structured Clinical Interview and diagnostic interview for DSM IV personality disorder. Patients were also interviewed about their childhood experiences. They were inquired about all of their positive and negative experiences.

Analyses were used to test for between group differences in the distribution of reported events. For variables in which the omnibus [chi square] was significant at the p < .05 level, 2 x 2 [chi square] comparisons were performed between groups. No Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons were applied; however, to reduce the number of comparisons, analyses were restricted to specific domains of childhood experiences and age groups based on the hypotheses of the study. These three domains were as follows:

1. childhood and adolescent achievement and functioning (especially social),

2. adverse family events and abuse, and

3. positive family relationships and caretaker social competence (John G. Gunderson, Childhood Antecedents of Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Retrospective Study).

Patients were asked, if they underwent long periodic separations form their parents or caretakers. The author made especial emphasis on such information since the entire purpose of this investigation was to look for evidence of impairments in functioning and social relationship in childhood. It was interesting to discover that patients who belonged to the areas of athletic achievement, extracurricular activity and leadership roles were also susceptible to Avoidant Personality Disorder.