Gender Differences and Possible Improvement in Histrionic Personality Disorders

Abstract

Histrionic personality disorder has been found to have potential gender differences in not only genetic level but also social expectation. Women have the familial link and more inheritance than men, which suggests the vulnerability of getting HPD because of gender. Females also exhibit HPD differently from men, with less aggressive behavior and more seductive actions. This has made clinicians misdiagnose men as having antisocial personality disorder simply because they seek attention differently. In this way, clinicians should identify the purpose of each patient when they report distress performances. Even though DSM does not account for sex-typed behavior written specifically, women do manifest those criteria more often normally in life. In addition, females and males also have different strategies to seek professional help. Thus, classification systems can focus on more sex-related written descriptions or provide examples of behaviors that different gender would have to diagnose HPD more accurately. Treatment can also target sex-typed solutions.