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psychiatric

Schizoid personality disorder

Schizoid personality disorder is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency toward a solitary or sheltered lifestyle, reservedness, emotional coldness, detachment, and apathy. Affected individuals may be unable to form intimate attachments to others and simultaneously possess a rich and elaborate but exclusively internal fantasy world. Other associated features include stilted speech, a lack of deriving enjoyment from most activities, feeling as though one is an "observer" rather than a participant in life, an intolerance towards meeting emotional expectations of others, apparent indifference when praised or criticized, being on the asexual , and idiosyncratic moral or political beliefs.

Underlined words are explained — tap any of them.

Symptoms — what it feels like

  • ·Pervasive emotional detachment, reduced affect, lack of close friends, apathy, anhedonia, unintentional insensitivity to social norms, sexual abstinence, preoccupation with fantasy, autistic thinking without loss of skill to recognize reality

Causes — why it happens

  • ·Family history; cold, indifferent, or intrusive parenting; traumatic brain injury; low birth weight;

How it's found

  • ·Based on symptoms

Treatment

  • ·Psychodynamic psychotherapy; behavioral therapy

Outlook

  • ·Typically poor
Plain-language summary adapted from Wikipedia. Not medical advice.