The Role of Social Work in Addressing Personality Disorders

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of personality disorders and their significance within social work practice. It begins by defining personality disorders and highlighting their prevalence and impact on individuals and society. The essay emphasizes the crucial role of social workers in diagnosing and treating these disorders, focusing on the importance of understanding symptoms, controlling environmental factors, and advocating for favorable policies. A literature review examines various perspectives on personality disorders, including definitions, diagnostic issues, and the burdens they impose on patients. The review synthesizes research articles to explore the causes of personality disorders, including environmental and genetic factors, and suggests preventative strategies. The essay concludes by reiterating the need for social workers to deepen their knowledge and skills to effectively address and prevent the impact of personality disorders, ultimately improving human wellbeing. The essay references key studies and offers valuable insights into the complexities of personality disorders and their management in social work.

UNIT:
NAME:
DATE:

Personality Disorder and Social Work
Practice
Introduction
It estimated that 6.5 % of Australians adults have personality disorder. Personality is an
important part of human beings and determines how they behave alone or interact with other
human beings and the environment. Personality disorder refers to a mental health problem where
an individual personality causes distress either to themselves or other human beings (Beck,
Davis, & Freeman, 2015). Personality disorder include the way an individual feels, thinks and
behaves that is different from expectations of culture and cause problems to one’s life and lasts
for a prolonged time. Social work practice has an important role in diagnosing and treating
personality disorders in the society. The following write-up reviews personality disorder
literature and its issues in mental health practice. This will involve discussing the importance of
understanding personality disorder for social work practice in mental health care and reviewing
six research articles on the topic.
Importance of Social Work Practice in Personality Disorder
Personality disorder is an important area for social work practice in delivering mental health
wellbeing. Social work practice has a responsibility of maintaining and improving people’s
wellbeing. Personality disorder lead as a mental illness deteriorates a person’s wellbeing
(Bateman, Gunderson, & Mulder, 2015). A person with personality disorder is vulnerable to self
sabotage, dangerous to others and contemplation of suicide. Patient with personality disorders
suffer from mood swings, have social isolation, have poor impulse control, have stormy
relationship, and are likely to abuse alcohol and drug substance (Lanier et al., 2013). The social
work practice needs to understand the symptoms of personality disorders in order to diagnose
and offer treatment to parents. This will help and support a person, their family, and groups.
Social work practice is then able to engage with an individual at different levels and solve a
problem. The social work practice also needs to understand personality disorder to control the
environmental factors that are likely to affect an individual personality (Lampe, 2015).
Personality disorder is influenced by an individual person’s environment and social work

practice can advocate for favorable policies to help disadvantaged persons’ in the community.
Therefore, personality disorder is an important issue in social work practice and help social
workers to assist and improve human wellbeing by identifying and addressing the mental illness.
Literature review
Personality disorder has been widely researched in the past. Academicians have strived to
explore and explain personality disorder as a mental illness and how knowledge and improved
skills can enhance quality of care. There are different types of personality disorders that have
been researched with an objective of improving patients’ wellbeing. The following section
contains literature review of personality’s disorders as a mental illness and it importance to social
work practice.
Van der Kolk (2017), defined personality disorder as a mental disorders that has enduring
maladaptive behavior and cognitive patterns that deviate from the accepted individual or
community culture. He stated that the patterns develop early and are inflexible causing
significant disability or distress. Personality disorders cause social, personal, and occupational
disruption from the normal human life. Cook et al., (2017) on the side defined personality
disorder as an exaggeration or variation of an individual personality attributes. They stated that
personality disorders often display antisocial behaviors which can reduce diagnostic and
treatment effectiveness.
Bailey & Barton ( 2014) study on narcissism and social work response analyzed and discussed
the relationship that exist in social work practice knowledge when handling a narcissism
oriented patient. The study found that patients with narcissistic personalities have internal claims
that are associated to self rational expectation. The study states that it is important for social
workers to have great knowledge of narcissism dynamics. The study encourages social workers
to critically reflect and develop deeper and social specific understanding of how personalities
differ and how to handle different patients for greater practice effectiveness in delivering human
wellness. The study concluded that there is a challenge of social work practice has to understand
narcissism personalities when treating personality disorders mental disorders.
According to Fonagy, Luyten, & Allison (2015), personality disorders are frustrating to an
individual, family and care givers. They found that personality disorders are reflections of deep

rooted and long standing problems of an individual. They also found that there is lack of
awareness among individual and communities on the mental illness. This made most of
individuals suffering from personality disorder to go undiagnosed. Patients were branded as
difficult to deal with and treat. Costa et al., (2016) in another study found that patients with
personality disorders were receiving inappropriate treatment which repeatedly did not yield
results. This situation leads to clients and social workers frustrations. This research outlined the
diagnostic issues that affect personality disorders patients. They concluded that social work
practice should address the issue of personality disorder awareness to communities diagnostic of
the mental illness. Awareness will increase the number of people seeking and accepting help
from social workers to treat their personality. Awareness will also help the society to stop
stigmatization on individuals suffering from personality disorders.
According to Tyrer, Reed, & Crawford (2015), personality disorders impose a heavy burden to
patients. Personality disorders lead to human suffering, stigmatization, and social exclusion to
the patient. The patient and the family incur financial cost to manage the illness. They found that
personality ill patients were denied equal opportunities economically, socially and for human
development. They are excluded from decision making and both civil and political rights are not
observed. The patients are not able to work and use their saving to manage the disorder. The
personality disorder also leads to disability. Lack of patient early diagnosis and treatment can
lead to advanced disease conditions and disability (Kealy, & Ogrodniczuk, 2018). Personality
disorders therefore progressively lead to human burdens to a patient. The patient becomes
vulnerable to poverty. This lowers the individual quality of life. The wellbeing of the patient
replaced with human burdens that range from diseases and finances. Gibson (2015), states that
social work practice should focus on prevention strategies to avoid mental disorder advancement.
The social workers should detect mental disorder early enough to introduce an intervention that
can stop the advancement of the personality disorder. This will avoid the patient from
experiencing social isolation or mental illness advancing to disability. The social work practice
therefore should focus on mental health wellness campaign as a strategy to prevent personality
disorders from happening in a community.
Mazer, Cleare, Young, & Juruena, (2018), established that personality disorders are caused by
either environmental factor or genetic factor or both of them combined. Environmental factors

that influence personality disorders are the conditions that an individual personality develops in.
A surrounding that an individual is brought up in can make them vulnerable to personality
disorders. The research found that children that experience traumatic experiences are more likely
to have personality disorders compare to other children. Children that have poor care were also
found to have a high risk of suffering from personality disorders. Van der Kolk, (2017), found
that personality disorders can be passed from parents to children. Parent’s personality’s traits get
passed to kids who then become vulnerable to personalities disorders. Zachar, Krueger, &
Kendler, (2016), concluded that social work practice should focus on areas where children
experience traumatic situations and provide counseling to mold their personality to avoid
personality disorders. The social workers can project the likely areas and children to have high
personality disorders. This entails that social work practice should be intense in vulnerable areas
in terms of trauma or poor care to continuously improve people wellbeing.
Conclusion
From the write up, personality disorder is a prolonged behavior or cognitive disruption of an
individual. Personality disorder causes distress and can lead to disability. Personality ill patients
behave against the expectations of the society. Though each individual has a unique personality,
patients behavior go behold the accepted expectation of their culture. Social work practice
objective is to improve people wellbeing. Social work practice is important for counseling,
advocating, diagnosing, and treating personality disorders. The literature review show that
different authors have different definition of personality disorder but have almost the same
meaning. Personality disorders cause frustrations and health burdens. Personality disorders are
determined by environmental and genetic factors of an individual. Social workers can predict
children or areas likely to have high prevalence of personality disorders. Therefore, social
worker practice should focus on deepening knowledge and skills to understand personality
disorders and prevent it impact to the society for improved wellbeing.

References
Bailey, I., & Barton, H. (2014). Narcissism and the Social Work Response. Australian Social
Work, 67(4), 582-592.
Bateman, A. W., Gunderson, J., & Mulder, R. (2015). Treatment of personality disorder. The
Lancet, 385(9969), 735-743.
Beck, A. T., Davis, D. D., & Freeman, A. (Eds.). (2015). Cognitive therapy of personality
disorders. Guilford Publications.
Cook, A., Spinazzola, J., Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., Cloitre, M., ... & Mallah, K.
(2017). Complex trauma in children and adolescents. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), 390-398.
Costa, J., Marôco, J., Pinto‐Gouveia, J., Ferreira, C., & Castilho, P. (2016). Validation of the
psychometric properties of the Self‐Compassion Scale. Testing the factorial validity and
factorial invariance of the measure among borderline personality disorder, anxiety
disorder, eating disorder and general populations. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy,
23(5), 460-468.
Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., & Allison, E. (2015). Epistemic petrification and the restoration of
epistemic trust: A new conceptualization of borderline personality disorder and its
psychosocial treatment. Journal of Personality Disorders, 29(5), 575-609.
Gibson, M. (2015). Shame and guilt in child protection social work: new interpretations and
opportunities for practice. Child & Family Social Work, 20(3), 333-343.
Kealy, D., & Ogrodniczuk, J. S. (2018). Mechanisms of change in treatments of personality
disorders: Commentary on the special section. Journal of personality disorders,
32(Supplement), 134-142.
Lanier, Paul, Bollinger, Sarah, & Krueger, Robert F. (2013). Advances in the Conceptualization
of Personality Disorders: Issues Affecting Social Work Practice and Research.(Report).
Clinical Social Work Journal, 41(2), 155-162.
Lampe, L. (2015). Social anxiety disorders in clinical practice: Differentiating social phobia
from avoidant personality disorder. Australasian Psychiatry, 23(4), 343-346.
Mazer, A. K., Cleare, A. J., Young, A. H., & Juruena, M. F. (2018). Bipolar affective disorder
and borderline personality disorder: Differentiation based on the history of early life
stress and psychoneuroendocrine measures. Behavioural Brain Research.

Tyrer, P., Reed, G. M., & Crawford, M. J. (2015). Classification, assessment, prevalence, and
effect of personality disorder. The Lancet, 385(9969), 717-726.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). Developmental Trauma Disorder: Toward a rational diagnosis for
children with complex trauma histories. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), 401-408.
Zachar, P., Krueger, R. F., & Kendler, K. S. (2016). Personality disorder in DSM-5: An oral
history. Psychological medicine, 46(1), 1-10.