Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffThe exact causes of schizoid personality disorder are unknown, although a combination of genetic and environmental factors — particularly in early childhood — are thought to contribute to development of all personality disorders.
A person with schizoid personality disorder may have had a parent who was cold or unresponsive to emotional needs, or might have grown up in a foster home where there was no love. Or, because people with schizoid personality disorder are often described as being hypersensitive or thin-skinned in early adolescence, a person with schizoid personality disorder may have had needs that others treated with exasperation or scorn.
A family history — such as having a parent who has any of the disorders on the schizophrenic spectrum — also increases the chances of developing the disorder.
- 1. Pfohl B. Personality disorders. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Oct. 10, 2008.
- 2. Personality disorders. The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library: The Merck Manual for Patients and Caregivers. http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec07/ch105/ch105a.html. Accessed Aug. 1, 2008.
- 3. Skodol AE, et al. Positive childhood experiences: Resilience and recovery from personality disorder in early adulthood. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 2007;68(7):1102-1108.
- 4. Schizoid personality disorder. In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2000.
- 5. Schizoid personality disorder. In: Sadock BJ, et al. Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. 8th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2005:2081-2082.
- 6. Zanni GR. The graying of personality disorders: Persistent, but different. The Consultant Pharmacist. 2007: 22(12):995-1003.
