Category: Personality Disorder

Diagnostic Criteria

A) 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:

1. Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference).
2. Odd  beliefs  or  magical  thinking  that  influences  behavior  and  is  inconsistent  with  sub cultural    norms  (e.g., superstitions,  belief  in  clairvoyance,  telepathy,  or  ‘’sixth  sense”; in  children  and  adolescents,  bizarre  fantasies  or  preoccupations).
3. Unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions.
4. Odd thinking  and  speech  (e.g.,  vague,  circumstantial,  metaphorical,  over elaborate,  or  stereotyped).
5. Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation.
6. Inappropriate or constricted affect.
7. Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar.
8. Lack  of  close  friends  or  confidants  other  than  first-degree  relatives.
9. Excessive  social  anxiety  that  does  not  diminish  with  familiarity  and  tends  to  be  associated  with   paranoid  fears  rather  than  negative  judgments  about  self.

B) Does  not  occur  exclusively  during  the   course  of  schizophrenia,  a bipolar  disorder  or  depressive  disorder  with  psychotic  features,  another  psychotic   disorder,  or  autism  spectrum  disorder.

Note:  If criteria are met prior to the onset of schizophrenia, add “premorbid,” e.g., “Schizotypal personality disorder (premorbid).”