Schizotypal Personality Disorder

People with schizotypal personality disorder are often described as odd or eccentric. About 3% of the population has schizotypal personality disorder and it may be more common in men. Like all personality disorders, it is typically developed by early adulthood. Individuals with this disorder may be at risk of developing anxiety, depression, and other distressing moods. As many as 40 to 50% also suffer from a depressive disorder, which occasionally may cause the person to develop suicidal tendencies. Only a small number of people with this disorder ever develop full-fledged schizophrenia. The major features of schizotypal personality disorder are:

• Extreme discomfort in social relationships 

People with schizotypal personality disorders are extremely uncomfortable in close relationships, even with people who are familiar. They have no interest in forming friendships or sexual relationships. Their discomfort may be shown by the person acting cold and aloof when interacting with others.

• Few close relationships

Individuals with this disorder form few, if any, close relationships.

• Odd appearance and thinking

Their appearance and behavior is often characterized as odd or strange. A person with this disorder might complain of odd symptoms, such as pain in the blood or bones. Many believe they are clairvoyant, telepathic, or have a sixth sense.

• Suspicious or paranoid ideas

People with schizotypal personality disorder are very suspicious and may believe that others are talking about them. They may perceive references to themselves in others' conversations.

Symptoms

A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

• ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
• odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
• unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
• odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
• suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
• inappropriate or constricted affect
• behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
• lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
• excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self

Criteria summarized from:American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.