Reply #49: I can understand a fear of sociopaths...but it's bigger than that

[HereSince1628]

With respect to personality disorders (setting aside a number of serious trauma related disorders like PTSD), all three clusters of personality disorder are associated with childhood maltreatment at statistically significant levels.

Among the personality disorders in the DSM-IV, Schizoid, Anti-social, Borderline, Narcissistic, Dependent, Depressive and Passive Aggressive are all significantly associated with childhood maltreatment. These correlations are not clean cause-and-effect sorts of things, some people exposed to mistreatment develop mental disorders as a result and other people do not.

Most of these disorders result in behaviors that do not threaten others. However these illnesses can be devastating to the people who are afflicted by them.