Permanent personality changes can be the result of traumatic long-term stress or a single situation. The changes that take place in the personality then are not due to mechanical damage or disease to the brain. Their source are extreme experiences that affect the psyche so much that returning to the well-being before they experienced them is difficult and long-lasting or even impossible.

Mental illness, chronic pain experience or surviving a catastrophe - a natural disaster or a terrorist attack are stressors that can permanently affect the personality. This impact is a change in the current pattern of behavior, feeling, thinking and functioning in relationships with other people.

Permanent personality change after a mental illness

These kinds of personality changes can arise from difficult experiences caused by severe mental illness. Their source is not prepsychotic personality disorders or states of incomplete recovery from mental illness. In diagnosis, they must be distinguished from residual schizophrenia and symptoms of incomplete recovery from mental illness. A person who experiences such personality changes may:

  • show great dependence on others and present a demanding attitude,
  • have a conviction about being marked by a past illness. It leads to isolation and inability to establish close and good relationships with other people,
  • constantly complaining about various diseases and ailments, which may be accompanied by hypochondriacal tendencies and entering the role of a sick person,
  • give up your current activities, limit them or talk about the lack of any interests and skills in spending free time,
  • have an unstable or dysphoric mood, not resulting from a history of mental illness,
  • report problems with coping in social (mother, father, friend, daughter, etc.) and professional (employee) roles.

Permanent personality changes due to pain

Experiencing chronic pain syndrome (e.g. in a chronic disease or cancer), disability, or loss of a loved one can also result in permanent personality changes. Chronic physical pain associated with illness or disability may:

  • provoke irritability,
  • trigger arousalpsychomotor,
  • reduce or completely give up your interests,
  • lower your mood and make you cry,
  • and sometimes even induce psychotic reactions.

Psychological pain after the loss of a loved one is difficult to locate because it is not felt in a specific place in the body. You could say that "the whole person" hurts. Although the source of the pain cannot be identified, it causes specific somatic symptoms (e.g. nausea, migraine, blockages / paralysis in the body, preventing proper functioning). To this can be added psychological symptoms similar to those associated with chronic physical pain.

Important

Permanent personality change can be considered if the change persists for at least 2 years after the traumatic event.

Permanent personality change after the catastrophe

It appears after experiencing extreme stress related to, for example, prolonged participation in life-threatening situations (terrorism), natural disaster (fire, flood), prolonged captivity associated with the risk of life (kidnapping), torture and stay in a concentration camp.

The stress that occurs then must be so strong that it does not matter what the previous psychological resistance of the person who suffered it was. Surviving this particular experience is enough for irreversible changes in the psyche to arise.

They can be manifested:

  • hostile or distrustful attitude towards the world,
  • withdrawal from social life,
  • constant feeling of emptiness or even hopelessness,
  • the tension and irritation that come from being threatened and alienated.

This type of personality change may be preceded by post-traumatic stress disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).

This will be useful to you

PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a delayed or prolonged reaction to a short- or long-term stress event. Such an experience must be particularly threatening or catastrophic. And the experiences it causes are very difficult for almost every person. The fact that PTSD will appear or its course will be more severe may be influenced by e.g. obsessive-compulsive and asthenic personality, i.e. passive or dependent personality, and a previously experienced nervous breakdown (neurotic decompensation).

Category:

Psychiatry