The characteristic in individuals with personality disorders that makes it most necessary for staff to schedule frequent meetings is:

Question

a. flexibility and unconventional responses to stress.
b. a desire to achieve emotional intimacy with staff.
c. a tendency to evoke countertransference and conflict.
d. an impaired ability to develop trusting relationships.

Answer 1

C
One feature shared among the many personality disorders is an impaired or maladaptive style of relating to others. Another such shared factor is a tendency to rely on maladaptive coping mechanisms (such as splitting) to deal with anxiety. Those factors tend to stir strong emotional responses in staff, leading to countertransference responses (e.g., anger toward the patient), a loss of objectivity, reduced ability to be therapeutic, and possibly staff burnout. Staff meetings are one way to increase awareness of these dynamics and deal with them constructively as a group. Patients with personality disorder tend to be inflexible, demonstrate maladaptive responses to stress, and are unable to develop true intimacy with others and trusting relationships; some seek to avoid intimacy. The problem with trust exists but is not the characteristic that requires frequent staff meetings.