this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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None of those things are true. True crime media’s misuse of sciencey sounding words is gonna be the death of us. Pds are mental illnesses, pds are treatable, and psychopath is generally a pejorative term for someone having an experience that the dsm would categorize as psychosis.
Edit: I want to add that the criteria for personality disorders is not cut and dry, but has a lot to do with social norms and a lot of marginalized people (i.e. women) get scooped up into those categories whether or not they actually fit them. Insurance (or other healthcare systems) also require diagnoses to pay for treatment, so the process is often sloppy and rushed. The truth is that mental illness categories are not irrefutable truths or a reliable way to tell much about an actual person from afar. They’re just different kinds of people + circumstance. So you really can’t say that “people with X are BAD and always dangerous”. You just don’t know. The world and people are just not predictable or simple that way.
The sad truth is that part of being a narcissist, psychopath, or sociopath is not accepting any flaws. These three types of disorders are self-sustaining; their inherent nature makes it almost impossible to change for the better.
They are classified as personality disorders because they involve stable, deeply ingrained patterns of behavior and thought, rather than episodic disruptions typical of mental illnesses. Treatment is challenging due to the ingrained nature of these traits, lack of self-awareness, and resistance to change. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and other therapeutic approaches can help manage symptoms but cannot cure the fundamental personality traits. The primary goal is to mitigate the disorder's impact on the individual's life and those around them.
This is just not true, though. Not according to the DSM or to anyone actually living with these conditions. Tons of people with personality disorders seek help, want relief from their symptoms, and have no desire to hurt people. There are a bunch of vlogs and articles and podcasts by the exact people you are saying do not exist. NPD and ASPD are just two highly stigmatized disorders that plenty of people live with. It sucks to struggle with social functioning, so of course people seek help.
It is also generational - the idea that ‘x people never get help’ probably has a lot to do with how flawed mental healthcare has been in most places in the past 100 years. Even seeking treatment for something like anxiety can still lead to bad outcomes today, so it makes sense that people struggling with something very stigmatized would be more likely to hesitate to see someone about it. People can still lose their rights over mental illness in many countries, not to mention their social status/ability to find work/etc. the risks are real.
Sociopath and psychopath are not medical terms. They don’t refer to anything real, they’re a crime-media thing. Also, people who say that anyone who is violent or abusive has a personality disorder are talking nonsense - lundy bancroft’s Why Does He Do That has a good section on why/how abusers usually are not mentally ill (or are not doing abuse because of their mental illness) but instead want an excuse for their behavior. Abuse is almost always intentional and thought through. It’s about power, it isn’t an accident.
Most mental illnesses are also not ‘only episodic’. Ocd is all the time, depression is all the time, etc. There is a lot of misinformation here. I would suggest getting info about mental health from reputable medical sources and people who live with the conditions you’re talking about. There are a lot of myths out there.