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
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffThere are no laboratory tests for schizoid personality disorder, and diagnosis usually comes after an in-depth interview with your doctor. During this interview, the doctor will ask questions about symptoms and mental well-being, and take a medical, psychiatric and social history. A physical examination can help rule out other conditions, and a mental health professional will likely be consulted for further evaluation.
To be diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, you must meet criteria spelled out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association. Criteria for schizoid personality disorder to be diagnosed include four or more of the following characteristics:
- Neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
- Almost always chooses solitary activities
- Has little, if any, interest in sexual experiences with another person
- Takes pleasure in few, if any, activities and rarely experiences strong emotions
- Lacks close friends or confidantes other than first-degree relatives
- Appears indifferent to praise or criticism
- Shows emotional coldness, detachment or flattened emotions
In addition, the symptoms must not occur exclusively during a bout of schizophrenia, a mood disorder with psychotic features, another psychotic disorder or a pervasive developmental disorder (such as autism or Asperger's syndrome). Also, a diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder may not be appropriate should symptoms be due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.
Further complicating a diagnosis is that the symptoms of schizoid personality may resemble autism or Asperger's syndrome.
- 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.
