Antisocial Personality Disorder and its Potential Dangers Essay

Antisocial Personality disorder is defined as a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others (American Psychiatric Association, 659). This means any repeated actions that do not take into account any other factors like people's emotions are a case for Antisocial Personality Disorder. A diagnosis of APD requires three out of seven criteria as dictated by the American Psychiatric Association (659):

Antisocial personality disorder is a disregard for others rights and violating theses rights. This disorder starts as a child to people who carry this disorder portray the characteristics of irritability, aggressiveness, lack of remorse, and irresponsibility. A psychopath falls under the umbrella of antisocial personality disorders. A psychopath is a person with a personality disorders which is inherited from their parents at birth. Flashes of these inherited factors show and happen in the child upbringing this includes torture animals at a young age, playing weird dark games as a kid, or ripping heads of toys. A perfect example of a Psychopath is Edmund Kemper. A man who showed his psychopath tendencies at a young age that grew into to him becoming a serial killer.

Antisocial personality disorder is a very common mental disease around the U.S that can be treated, but not cured. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, a young girl named Abigail Williams was a seventeen year old “Strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with and endless capacity for dissembling.” (Miller 1130). Throughout the play, Abigail’s personality has been very mean and unpleasant, which has made her full of nothing but worry, apprehension, and propriety (Miller 1130). Her personality change relates to a well-known disorder called Antisocial personality disorder, also known as APD. APD is a mental condition where a person’s “ways of thinking, perceiving situations, and relating to others are dysfunctional--and destructive”(Mayo Staff). Symptoms of this disorder are triggered during early childhood years and are “fully evident for most people during their 20’s and 30’s”(Mayo Staff). APD is a disorder that has symptoms that apply to Abigail because she often lies to people, she has had a hard life at home, and she intimidated people into doing what she wanted them to do.

Martens, W. H. (2000). Antisocial and psychopathic Personality Disorders: Causes, Course, and Remission- A Review Artical. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminolgy , 44(4), 406-430.

This report will describe the symptoms, suspected causes, diagnosis process, treatment, and prevention of antisocial personality disorder.

     While there have been no outwardly successful treatments for Antisocial Personality Disorder, many of the disorders’ individuals never seek treatment alone, as they see no reason to conform to the rules of society with which they find no satisfaction. Instead, the individual will be prompted by his family or friends, or will be forced by a court system to seek treatment, and then will usually comply, and will consent to treatment. Much of the recent treatment for Antisocial Personality Disorder has been behavioral, and has not been based around biological or medicinal findings.

Antisocial personality disorder (APD or ASPD) is a mental disorder in which a person’s approach in any given situation as well as his style of thinking is neglecting towards others. People with this disorder are commonly known as psychopaths or sociopaths. An individual with APD shows empathy and disregards people’s thoughts and feelings. Those with APD can be characterized as morally reprehensible. They are the ones that seem to say all of the “right” things. Antisocial personality disorder, in contrary to

Antisocial personality disorder is a disorder of the brain that cause one to disregard other people’s rights by violating them, they lack empathy and are very malicious towards others, they enjoy the suffering of individuals whether it be an animal or human being and it usually occurs during child/teen hood and worsens as the child ages. With this disorder comes a hatred toward society due to lack of knowledge of the real world “Many of the children grow up shy, lonely, highly sensitive, with feelings of being rejected, unloved and neglected by family and/or society”(Miller, 2014, p.13). Isolation at young ages causes children to not know how to interact with others in the real world they think that it is okay to violate personal space because they were never taught what that was. With the isolation and feelings of oddity in the child, they begin to manifest fantasies within their own mind (Miller, 2014, p.14). Many times the child starts out with violent sexual fantasies that they would like to act out but do not have an execution plan so they experiment on inanimate objects or even themselves or family members who will not tell such as younger siblings. This quickly escalates to the things they do to strangers in society starting with smaller steps such as stalking, peeping tom, or abduction. With such successes, they begin their reign of terror

Long-term patterns of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others are qualities that are often related to criminal behavior. This is a mental condition that is defined as Antisocial Personality Disorder by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Antisocial Personality Disorder, or otherwise known as ASPD, is a disorder that fits into two essential categories: psychopathy and sociopathy. ASPD can be caused by many deformations within the brain, these deformations can be caused by a number of outside influences including child abuse and parental neglect. With this in mind, psychopathy and sociopathy are two different forms of this very severe mental disorder. Not

It is hard to first distinguish someone with this disorder because most of them are very friendly, outgoing, and have very likable personalities. Since they often feel no guilt or remorse they repeatedly leave behind a trail of friends, family, and unknown victims with a sometimes-irreversible damage of lies, manipulation, frustration and broken promises. The lack of moral or emotional development gives an antisocial person a lack of understanding for other people's feelings. This enables them to be malicious and deceitful without feeling remorse about their actions. They are incapable of having long lasting, close, warm and responsible relationships with

Furthermore, psychopathy was considered during the twentieth century, the most widely used term to describe antisocial behavior (Reed, 1996). In the 1980s, the committee who devised the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for the American Psychiatric Association recommended the term antisocial personality syndrome to be changed to antisocial personality disorder (Ellis & Walsh, 2000). Antisocial Personality Disorder Hare & McPherson (1984), were successful in pushing the idea that there is a significant correspondence between violent and persistent delinquent and criminal histories and antisocial personality disorder diagnosis. Acute persistent child conduct disorder behavior symptoms, also known as conduct disorder, have been directly linked to serious criminality and antisocial personality disorder (Ellis & Walsh, 2000). Although criminality and antisocial personality disorder ought not be equated, they should be seen as closely linked behavioral phenomena (Ellis & Walsh, 2000). Vitella (1996) believes that individuals with childhood conduct disorder have a higher than normal probability of being both criminal and diagnosed antisocial personality disorder in adolescence and adulthood, and persons with serious criminal records have a higher probability of being diagnosed psychopathic than those with little or no criminal history. Nevertheless, Ellis & Walsh (2000) in caution pointed out that these

The concept of psychopathy originated in the 1800s to describe individuals that consistently failed to conform to societal norms and exhibited antisocial behavior that did not fit the concept of mental illness of the time period. While, psychopathy was a common term used to describe individuals suffering from this disorder other descriptions were coined such as “Pinel’s term “manie sans delvie” meaning mania without delirium in the 1700s, to describe patents whose ‘affective faculties were disordered’” or Pritchard’s term “moral insanity” (Ogloff 520). In the 1930’s Partridge argued that psychopathy was a social rather than a mental disorder and proposed that the concept of sociopathy be introduced as a more accurate description. The American Psychological Association adopted Partridge’s term for their Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel in 1952. However, in 1968 the American Psychological Association changed the diagnostic label from sociopath to “personality disorder, antisocial” for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel – II that continued through to the DSM - III in 1980 and the DSM - III-R in 1987 and the DSM - IV in 1994. Today the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel categorizes antisocial personality disorder as a personality disorder and it is named as such. Unfortunately, not much research has been conducted

Antisocial personality disorders are immense, and psychopaths and sociopaths are just two of the various personality disorders. An antisocial personality disorders is defined as, “a type of chronic mental condition in which a person's ways of thinking, perceiving situations and relating to others are dysfunctional — and destructive.” (Mayo Clinic Staff). Sociopaths are a direct correlation to antisocial personality

Antisocial personality disorder is one of the hardest mental disorders to treat. Treatment is long term and may better the situation but the disorder will not be cured. It is also very rare for an individual with ASPD to seek help for themselves due to their denial of symptoms. Oftentimes, help is only sought if the individual is in legal

The relationship between those who suffer from personality disorders and violent criminal activity are recurrent. For years