Personality traits and pathology in older and younger incarcerated women

Abstract

Personality disorders were examined in 157 incarcerated women, using the Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality (SNAP; Clark, 1996) to assess 10 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-III-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) diagnostic categories and dimensions and 15 domains of trait/temperament relevant to disordered personality. Similar to both community samples and incarcerated men, older women had lower rates of personality disorders than younger women, and the difference was mostly accounted for by differences in the Cluster B disorders. In an exploratory analysis of trait and temperament scales, the older women also scored lower in Aggression, Disinhibition, Entitlement, Exhibitionism, Impulsivity, and Manipulativeness while younger women scored lower in Workaholism and Propriety. These findings suggest that remission of antisocial behavior in women may be associated with changes in lower order personality traits or temperament.

The structure of personality disorders in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder.

“…SEM analyses showed that significant predictors of the Externalizing factor were gender (men had higher means on the latent variable), age (an inverse association), greater exposure to trauma, and exposure to combat trauma, specifically. This is consistent with prior research on the association between gender (Kramer, Krueger, & Hicks, 2008), age (Hurt & Oltmanns, 2002; Littlefield, Sher, & Wood, 2009) and externalizing psychopathology. The specificity of the relationship between combat exposure and externalizing was unexpected, however, and may be a function of the large percentage of male veterans in this sample.…”

The Role of Impulsivity in Antisocial and Violent Behavior and Personality Disorders Among Incarcerated Women

“…This is consistent with previous studies in which younger individuals showed higher rates of impulsive and sensation-seeking behavior than older individuals (Hurt & Oltmanns, 2002;Todesco, 2004).…”

“…Impulsivity is an important component of borderline and antisocial personality disorders (Casillas & Clark, 2002;Coles, 1997;Hochhausen et al, 2002;Hurt & Oltmanns, 2002). Therefore, we expected to find a significant relationship between these disorders and impulsivity.…”

A grounded theory exploration of deliberate self-harm in incarcerated women

“…A national rate of mental illness for incarcerated women has been estimated at 73% of all female state prisoners and 61% of federal prisoners (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006). Current national data could not be found regarding the rates of mental illness in incarcerated women by specific categories but Hurt and Oltmanns (2002) found that 64% of the women prisoners they studied met the criteria for at least one personality disorder.…”