ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER: FACTS AND CAUSES

WHAT IS ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER?

Antisocial Personality Disorder
APD and the serial bully

I estimate that around 1 person in 30 (approximately 2 million) in the UK exhibits the profile of the serial bully whose behaviour is congruent with many of the diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder. Some serial bullies meet sufficient clinical criteria to merit the label psychopath.

Although mental health professionals are not all in agreement, the emphasis of antisocial personality disorder is, as the name implies, on the antisocial acts committed by the individual. Psychopaths, on the other hand, are diagnosed more according to personality traits, eg lack of remorse, lack of guilt, lack of conscience, etc. Whilst many psychopaths meet the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder, not all do; similarly, not all people with antisocial personality disorder meet the criteria for a psychopath.

BULLYING IS A FORM OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

HOW IS BULLYING DIAGNOSE AS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER?

We usually think of bullies as big, scary men. We don't imagine that they could take the form of small, spiteful women. Most of us have observed that in grade school and high school, bullies come in both sexes, but we still tend to think of them as physically intimidating, physically threatening males.

In reality, there's a type of emotional bully who is far more dangerous and destructive than any physical one. The physical bully is usually a person who was bullied themselves as a child by someone bigger and stronger. They take out their hurt and angry feelings on peers who appear smaller and weaker than them. There are various effective ways of dealing with these types which I won't get into, here.