An Overview of Histrionic Personality Disorder

Abstract

As diagnosis criteria of personality disorders are developing, people are more aware of the effects of mental disorders. Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is one of the ten personality disorders that is classified by DSM-V, which has typical patterns of attention-seeking behaviours. HPD symptoms not only make individuals struggle to properly interact with their surrounding people, but also make them unable to build or maintain long-term relation-ships, which can further lead to mental distresses. Serious consequences of HPD people’s unpredictable emotions are also witnessed, such as embarrass-ing or harming others, which disturb normal social orders. This article anal-yses the potential causes, impacts and treatments of HPD based on previous studies on cluster B personality disorders. According to the results, various triggers of HPD include the experiences of being ignored or mildly annoyed by parents and anxious-preoccupied attachment styles, and HPD can lead to serious cooccurring mental disorders including other personality disorders, depression, and also various cognitive issues related to mental disorders. In addition, questionnaires have been developed to diagnose HPD, and effec-tive treatments methods such as functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) and cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) are used to reduce HPD symptoms.