5.06 Cluster A Personality Disorders

Psychiatry review for the USMLE Step 1 Exam.

• The cluster A personality disorders include paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal.
• These disorders are characterized by individuals who are perceived as weird, awkward, and quiet.
• Personality disorders differ from normal personality quirks based on their negative impact on daily life, lack of awareness of the problem, and deviation from cultural expectations.
• Paranoid Personality Disorder:
  • Patients are chronically suspicious and distrustful of others, without persistent fixed delusions.
  • Key characteristics include unwarranted suspicions, doubts about loyalty, reluctance to confide, reading hidden meanings, holding grudges, perceiving attacks on reputation, and suspicion of infidelity.
• Schizoid Personality Disorder:
  • Individuals prefer isolation and have difficulty forming relationships.
  • Criteria for diagnosis include a lack of interest in close relationships, solitary activities, indifference to praise or criticism, emotional coldness, and flattened affectivity.
• Schizotypal Personality Disorder:
  • Considered a less severe form of schizophrenia, with odd behavior, speech, thinking, and mild perceptual experiences.
  • Notable features include social isolation, "magical" beliefs, mild paranoia, constricted affect, and social anxiety.