Personality Disorders Awareness Network (PDAN)

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Personality Disorders Awareness Network (PDAN)

PDAN's goals are to increase awareness of personality disorders, alleviate the impact on families, an PDAN is a volunteer-managed community.
(2009)

Personality Disorders Awareness Network (PDAN) promotes a receptive, authentic and civil atmosphere for comments and users. Empathic and in-depth discussions and debates are encouraged to learn and express mutual support for fellow readers and contributors. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinion regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion or agreement with other communi

ty members, the author of the post or staff members as long as those opinions are respectful and constructively add to the conversation. PDAN prides itself in providing information with a great diversity of content styles while we pay particular attention to the way the content is expressed. We summarize this by saying:

"Our key communication challenges are not so much in WHAT we say, but HOW we say it." PDAN IS AN INFORMATION CHANNEL, and NOT A SUPPORT GROUP:
PDAN's pages are information and discussion channels, and not support groups. PDAN is about awareness and prevention of personality disorders. Many people in our audience are family members of people with personality disorders, and therefore they may have a very different perspective on these mental conditions than those who actually suffer from them. PDAN sometimes share content and allows comments that some people may find disturbing. If you do, please mention it to us by contacting our pages. PDAN staff will then look at the comments you find disturbing. We appreciate your help in improving our pages. PDAN may not necessarily change every comment that people report as disturbing. People who are unable to see the viewpoint of family members, should look for support groups, at least as a complement of using PDAN’s pages. The same applies for family members. PDAN will sometime empathize with people who have personality disorders in ways that family members could find hard to understand. PDAN aims to create an atmosphere of radical acceptance and validation, which are two qualities we encourage you to practice personally. If you feel you need a support group for borderline personality disorder, we recommend groups such as GroupBPD https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupbpd
or other pages such as Borderline Personality Disorder Community https://www.facebook.com/borderline.personality.disorder.community
or BPD Pieces of Me https://www.facebook.com/piecesofme2/

There are 10 defined types of Personality Disorders grouped into three clusters, and a couple of other general types of PDs. Cluster A (odd or eccentric disorders)
- Paranoid personality disorder: characterized by a pattern of irrational suspicion and mistrust of others, interpreting motivations as malevolent.
- Schizoid personality disorder: lack of interest and detachment from social relationships, apathy, and restricted emotional expression.
- Schizotypal personality disorder: a pattern of extreme discomfort interacting socially, and distorted cognitions and perceptions. Cluster B (dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders)
- Antisocial personality disorder: a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, lack of empathy, bloated self-image, manipulative and impulsive behavior.
- Borderline personality disorder: pervasive pattern of instability in relationships, self-image, identity, behavior and affects often leading to self-harm and impulsivity.
- Histrionic personality disorder: pervasive pattern of attention-seeking behavior and excessive emotions.
- Narcissistic personality disorder: a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Cluster C (anxious or fearful disorders)
- Avoidant personality disorder: pervasive feelings of social inhibition and inadequacy, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation.
- Dependent personality disorder: pervasive psychological need to be cared for by other people.
- Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: characterized by rigid conformity to rules, perfectionism, and control to the point of satisfaction and exclusion of leisurely activities and friendships (not the same as and quite different from obsessive-compulsive disorder). Other personality disorders (personality disturbance due to the direct effects of a medical condition.)
- Other specified personality disorder – symptoms characteristic of a personality disorder but fails to meet the criteria for a specific disorder, with the reason given.
- Personality disorder not otherwise specified

For information on personality disorders, please see: http://www.pdan.org/what-are-personality-disorders/
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorders

For recent medical information, please see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5)
www.dsm5.org
or World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (WHO-ICD 10) http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2015/en #/F60

06/16/2026

This is Keir Harding of Beam and Jorge Zimbron of Springbank Ward in Cambridge talking about the challenge of risk management in secondary care for people told they have a personality disorder.

Tomorrow me and Hollie Jane are talking about how working with risk differently in the community can end an 8 year admission.

At the same time me, Jorge, Dan Warrender, Hollie and David Kingsley will be talking about:

“How do we practice in the way we need to, without fear getting in the way”

We hear a lot of “what would the coroner say?” “I need to keep my registration” “I’ve got a duty of care” meaning that people do something more restrictive than they think is best because of what it might look like.

Our session gives some examples of working in a way we hear people say can’t be done. We will explore the impact of fear on practice and how to make “managing the risk to ourselves” less important than “managing the risk to our patients”

British Personality Conference is on for the next 3 days

Looking forward to it. Updates to follow

This video from the BIGSPD25 conference in Liverpool explores the c...

06/14/2026

British Personality Disorder Conference from Tuesday next week.

Who is going? Anyone from here apply for one of the free lived experience places?

06/11/2026

Next week is the British & Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder Conference in Blackpool.

It’s a great place to find out what is going on in the world of “personality disorder”🤮 in the UK - largely because 10% of the places are free for people with lived experience.

Me and lots of other people will be sharing news from the conference one the hashtag on Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn, instagram and maybe others.

Do follow along, ask questions. Have a voice in the services aimed at you.

06/04/2026

Interesting article that says “don’t do short term interventions for those told they have personality disorder”

Makes me think of the short term interventions I did in the CMHT (which we did to try to offer “something”, but then got very annoyed at the attendees when it didn’t make much of a difference)

Also makes me think that for people who with poor experiences of relationships, you need to spend a lot of time building a relationship

Lastly, makes me think about how often home treatment/crisis teams don’t help this group of people.

A major new RCT of Structured Psychological Support finds brief therapy offers no meaningful benefit over usual care for people with personality disorders.

05/28/2026

Interesting article on how to help 12 year old children by telling them and those around them that their personality is disordered.

“Indeed, BPD tends to attract more stigma than other mental health conditions, especially among mental health professionals”

“These findings point to a common problem in the treatment of BPD: the use of (poly)pharmacotherapy, despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy. Recent meta-analyses in adults confirmed that there is no evidence for an effect of any psychotropic medication on the reduction of BPD pathology”

“Therefore, to overcome the myths around ‘the diagnosis that must not be named’ (Cannon & Gould, 2022; Chanen & McCutcheon, 2008; Larrivée, 2013), current national treatment

Background Borderline personality disorder (BPD) typically emerges during adolescence and early adulthood and has severe personal, social and economic consequences. Despite significant research effo...

05/25/2026

What is the impact of wearing a BPD diagnosis into a physical healthcare setting?

This study found that many participants felt doctors and nurses often:

* dismissed or doubted their symptoms,
* assumed they were exaggerating,
* blamed physical symptoms on mental health,
* or treated them as “difficult” patients.

Some people reported that once staff saw a BPD diagnosis in their notes, the attitude toward them changed noticeably. Participants described feeling ignored, shamed, or not taken seriously, especially around pain, self-harm, or emergencies.

The study argues that this stigma can lead to worse healthcare because people may:

* avoid seeking help,
* delay going to hospital,
* or receive poorer assessment and treatment.

The author’s overall point is that stigma around BPD exists not just in mental health services but across healthcare generally, and that staff training and more compassionate, trauma-informed care are needed.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with pervasive stigma that contributes to several consequences, such as inaccessible and inadequate healthcare. Existing literature concerning the ...

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