Psychopathology / Abnormal Psychology

ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
NAME
AFFILIATION INSTITUTION
1st response
Psychopathology is a term used to refer to the scientific study of mental distress or mental disorders and the factors that contribute to those disorders. According to DSM-III, classified these disorders as personality disorders since its implementation 1987 (Hyler et al, 1988). These disorders were are then classified into three types of clusters which are A, B, and C (Tyrer et al, 1979). The validity of clusters was seen as inappropriate based on some psychologists since they had some overlapping features from the personality disorders. Therefore, during the formation of DSM-5, some researchers suggested that the cluster system of disorders should be removed with the other four personality disorders because the theorists believed that there was no difference between the personality disorders and the clusters. However, the DSM-5 still continues to group the clusters into three categories.
2nd response
The existence of clusters was due to misdiagnosis of personality disorders. The diagnosis of these disorders could develop from consulting or visiting clinician and not from the methods used to diagnose other disorders. Different types of clusters display different unusual behaviors. For instance, people with cluster A are; eccentric, distrust and suspiciousness, cluster B are; more emotional, erratic, and dramatic and cluster C people show the sign of fearfulness and anxiety (Tyrer et al, 1979). The three types of clusters, I don’t think they are different from each other.

Therefore, the only distinct category is he personality disorders and uses the three cluster to determine the different types of personality based on the personal traits. The cluster has an important task to accomplish, which involves helping to diagnose personality disorders and maintain standards in the field of clinicians (Butcher et al, 2017).
3rd response
According to other several researchers have done, there are no distinguishing features between the personality clusters. One of the researchers on the Unresolved issues section, I had some challenges and discovered that some of the guests wanted to be alone. There were several similarities between the description of the guests and this explained why the clusters have a blurred line. The unclear lines between the diagnoses explain the reason why the increased diagnosis of personality disorders is not specified. This will lead to asking ourselves several questions if this is a challenge to school experiments, then how difficult is it to diagnose real people with real problems (Svrakic et al, 1993).
4th response
The question seems to be hard to answer but after reading about clusters, the problems seem to get worse within those classifications (Hyler & Lyons, 1988). Reading attentively those clusters will discover there are differences and this appears that these disorders cannot exist together on the same person. If two separate orders were to be treated, for example, if there is a person with both cluster A and cluster B, I will first treat the cluster B because as we have seen earlier the problem increases as the categories. Though, this may create issues of delays in diagnosing or lack of the disease. Although, is said a person cannot have one type of personality clusters and the only way to categorize the disorders should be on the spectrum (Svrakic et al, 1993).
5th response
Finally, the personality disorders were put in clusters which have similar symptoms, but there was no difference in those categories. Cluster A has disorder behaviors of eccentric, cluster B show dramatic, erratic and emotional symptoms while cluster C includes disorders of fearfulness persons (Tyrer et al, 1979). All the clusters are considered to be old and which can interfere with person’s relationships. A behavior is considered to be eccentric depending on the displayed behavior and dependent is considered to show extreme emotional behavior. Therefore, I don’t think there are differences between the three clusters, however, I do not also say they are completely different (Clark et al, 1994).
References
Butcher, J. N., Mineka, S, & Hooley, J. M. (2017). Abnormal psychology. Pearson education India.
Clark, L. A., Watson, D., & Mineka, S. (1994). Temperament, personality, and the mood and anxiety disorders. Journal of Abnormal psychology, 103(1), 103.
Hyler, S. E., & Lyons, M. (1988). Factor analysis of the DSM-III personality disorder clusters: A replication. Comprehensive Psychiatrist, 29(3), 304-308.
Svrakic, D. M., Whitehead, C., Przybeck, T. R., & Cloninger, C. R. (1993). Differential diagnosis of personality disorder by the seven factor model of temperament and character. Archives of general psychiatry, 50(12), 991-999.
Tyrer, P., & Alexander, J. (1979). Classification of personality disorder. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 135(2), 163-167.