20
&
January 2016 | Read this issue and more at www.healthandwellnessmagazine.net |
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Difficult to Classify
Drugs, alcohol exacerbate problem
By Charles Sebastian, Staff Writer
All of us have used the word “narcissism” in a general way to describe
a person who is too much in awe of
themselves. Perhaps a bit too much
time is spent in front of the mirror;
everyone else is always secondary;
and “I” statements seem to be the
only vocabulary the narcissist knows.
While this description is often
given to someone who simply hasn’t
matured to the point of considering other people in the world who
also have needs and wants, when it
is taken to an extreme, it becomes a
mental illness.
In the late 1960s, the terms egocentricism and megalomania were
used to describe this self-indulgent
personality type. Since that time, the
term “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD) has come to be used
by counselors and therapists. NPD
belongs to Cluster C, the third group
of personality disorders laid out in
the DSM-5, the most recent version
of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual published by the American
Psychological Association (APA).
Like so many mental illnesses,
NPD is difficult to classify. While
there are no double-blind studies to
verify the causes of the illness, there
are suggestions and suspicions. Low
functioning is a strong indicator of
NPD, which can be accompanied by
excessively high or exceedingly low
opinions of oneself. These extremes
can sometimes fluctuate, dependi