Antisocial Personality Disorder

Considered one of the most arduous mental disorders to diagnose, antisocial personality disorder has gained the needed attention it deserves over the past couple of decades. In the past, antisocial personality disorder, also known as ASP, was often misdiagnosed. Many earlier psychiatrists and psychologists often confused ASP with other disorders, such as: narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder (Black). As time went on, better guidelines for diagnosing ASP were brought to the forefront.

So, what exactly is antisocial personality disorder? In Donald W. Black’s Bad Boys, Bad Men, it states, “ ‘Sociopathy (sociopathic personality or antisocial personality) is a pattern of recurrent antisocial, delinquent, or criminal behavior that begins in early childhood or early adolescence and is manifested by disturbances in many areas of life: family relations, schooling, work, military service, and marriage.’ ” Additionally, people with ASP also demonstrate aggression, pathological lying, a lack of empathy, and will constantly break social norms and rules. While this disorder can affect any adult, ASP is seen predominantly amongst males. Research conducted by Paul Peterson has found that there are about 3.6 percent of adults in the US or about 7.6 million of the US population who have antisocial personality disorder; the disorder is more prevalent in men than women. One reason ASP is more commonly diagnosed in men than women is that women “learn to turn anger inward, while men learn to express it in outward actions; overt aggression is more likely to be tolerated in men than in women, encouraging women to act out in less obvious ways” (Black 29). That would add to the difficulty o...

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... of talk therapy, medication, and family support works best in the treatment of ASP patients.

ASP is an immensely tricky disorder to diagnose and treat. ASP requires great effort to deal with. In most cases, ASP is never truly treated but only downplayed. Antisocial personality disorder is considered the most disruptive of the personality disorders (Parker 634).

Works Cited

Black, Donald W., and C. Lindon Larson. Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial

Personality Disorder. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.

Mayo Clinic Staff. "Definition." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and

Research, 10 Sept. 2010. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Parker, Martin M., and R.H. Ettinger. Understanding Psychology. Third ed. Redding: BVT, 2010.

Print.

Peterson, Paul. "Antisocial Personality Disorder Statistics." IeTherapy.com. IeTherapy, n.d.

Web. 14 Nov. 2013.