spectrum 7

Nightmare protection magic

Urban witchcraft ideas:

I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve made some little pixel icons out of these in case anyone wants to put them on their blog. 

A more modest amount of literature is accessible concerning schizotypal personality disorder, a similar finding to The Quality Assurance Project (1990). This disorder is prevalent in approximately 3% of the general population (American Psychiatric Association 2000). Individuals are rarely seen in the psychiatric inpatient setting (McGlashan 1986) but are more common in outpatient settings (Bornsteinet al. 1988). The cognitive distortions in these individuals are the most severe of any in the personality disorders and generally consist of suspicious and paranoid ideation, ideas of reference, odd beliefs, magical thinking and illusions. Speech is coherent but may be vague, tangential, circumstantial, or overelaborate, and individuals may engage in emotional reasoning and personalization as a result of their concrete thought-form (Beck & Freeman 1990) while affect is often inappropriate or restricted (Beck & Freeman 1990). Generally, the themes expressed by an individual will be unique to them but common thoughts include: believing they are being watched; knowing what people are thinking; feeling something bad is going to happen; believing that they are not going to be liked by others; supposing there are reasons for everything; and believing they are defective (Beck & Freeman 1990). Inappropriate behaviour contributes to the extreme social isolation associated with this disorder. Common behaviour includes peculiar mannerisms such as excessive hand washing and refusing to touch doorknobs, dressing in an unusual manner, and generally avoiding eye contact (Stone 1985). Individuals will largely desire social relationships and experience great pain as a result of their isolation. This along with increased stress results in fewer opportunities for reality testing with others and the possibility of deterioration to a psychotic condition (Beck & Freeman 1990). Individuals may also seek treatment because of depression, dysphoria, anxiety, and substance dependence (Bornstein et al. 1988; Carrasco & Lecic-Tosevski 2000). Individuals with schizotypal personality disorder experience intense anxiety in social situations with unfamiliar people based on suspicion as to the motivations of others (Carrasco & Lecic-Tosevski 2000). The first strategy in treatment is to establish a therapeutic relationship and then reduce social isolation. It is also important to adopt a professional stance, provide clear explanations, tolerate odd beliefs and behaviours, and avoid overinvolvement in personal or social issues (Ward 2004). Other interventions include increasing social appropriateness through modelling appropriate behaviour and speech, providing a structured session or environment, and assisting the individual to look for objective evidence in the environment to evaluate their thoughts rather than relying on emotional responses (Beck & Freeman 1990; Stone 1996). The most significant issue associated with diagnostic uncertainty in schizotypal personality disorder is that the positive and negative symptoms parallel those of schizophrenia (Squires-Wheeler et al. 1997). Care must also be taken not to assume other diagnoses such as autism-spectrum disorders and mood disorders with psychotic features. As with the two other cluster A personality disorders, individuals with schizotypal personality disorder can also be clients in other settings but, interestingly, this personality disorder is more common in outpatient settings, where the consequences of odd behaviour and appearance may be contact with community mental health services.

plurality ask meme!