Diagnosis of Histrionic Personality Disorder

Histrionic personality disorder involves mixed symptoms of depression, over activity, exaggerated behavior, extremism and anxiety therefore various diagnostic techniques are applied to verify the presence of this mental disorder in any expected patient. These various diagnostic techniques that are commonly used to identify histrionic personality disorder are discussed here briefly. Let’s have a look over them.    

1- Behavioral Analysis

The first diagnostic technique for histrionic personality disorder is to observe and analyze the behavioral conditions of a person expected to be suffering from this mental abnormality. If a person is really having histrionic personality disorder then he might be able to deceive common people about his disturbed mental condition but he can not hide it for longer time period if observed by experienced psychiatrist. Excessiveness and exaggeration, dramatization and flirtation, idealization and devaluation are those symptoms that cannot be hidden from an observer’s eye.      

2- Presence of another Mental Problem 

In some cases of histrionic personality disorder occur in combination with other mental problems like depression, anxiety, alcoholism and conversion disorder etc which creates complication in the diagnosing process and often lengthens the period to get the actual state of mind and its severity.    

3- Family and Friends Interviews

Family interviews come on second number during which not only family members but friends and colleagues are also interviewed about the behavior of patient in various situations. It helps in getting adequate data about their likes and dislikes, traces of past traumatic experience or another hidden factor causing such behavioral anomaly.      

4- Mnemonic Used to Identify Histrionic Personality Disorder

A simple method to identify the presence of histrionic personality disorder in a person is to evaluate his behavior on the basis of a mnemonic ‘PRAISE ME’. This mnemonic can be explained as:

P (Proactive Behavior)

R (Relationship involve more Intimacy)

A (Attention)

I (Influenced easily, Try to Influence Others)

S (Speech in Impressive Style)

E (Emotional Shallowness)

M (Make up to Add Attraction)

E (Exaggerated State of Behavior)

This mnemonic helps a lot in tracing the shallowness and extremism hiding in inner self of a person suffering from histrionic personality disorder but presenting him an excellent figure before the world to gain attention of people present around him. 

Chances of Wrong Diagnosis

There is also present a chance of wrong diagnosis in the case of histrionic personality disorder because it involves a number of symptoms which are usually manifested in case of substance abuse, somatization disorder, depression, anxiety and conversion disorder etc. Therefore sometimes it is misdiagnosed as another type of disorder for having no specific identification criteria required for its exact diagnosis.