Schizotypal Personality Disorder

About Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Schizotypal personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with and reduced capacity for close relationships, together with cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentric behavior, beginning by early adulthood. Features include ideas of reference, odd beliefs or magical thinking such as belief in clairvoyance or telepathy, unusual perceptual experiences, odd thinking and speech, suspiciousness, inappropriate or constricted affect, eccentric appearance or behavior, lack of close friends, and excessive social anxiety that does not lessen with familiarity and is linked to paranoid fears rather than negative self judgment. Unlike in schizophrenia, the unusual beliefs and perceptions do not reach the level of sustained psychosis. DSM-5 lists it both among the personality disorders and within the schizophrenia spectrum, and ICD-11 classifies a similar condition, schizotypal disorder, with schizophrenia and other primary psychotic disorders. It is more common in relatives of people with schizophrenia, and a minority of people with the condition later develop a psychotic disorder. Depression and anxiety frequently co occur. Treatment is often supportive and may include cognitive behavioral therapy addressing social anxiety and unusual beliefs, social skills training, and antipsychotic medication in some cases for transient psychotic like symptoms.