Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental problem that is associated with established perception in an individual of permeating feelings and thoughts, fixation with self and factoring into consideration relationships with others. The people with this condition alternate between devalued and feeling omnipotent. Other characteristics of the problem are the need to be admired, influenced self-esteem and lack of empathy for others. Narcissistic personality disorder has no specific medication and the approach commonly employed talk therapy; however, the medication approach may be employed to treat other symptoms that are associated with the problem.
Talk therapy also called psychotherapy incorporates the interaction between the patient and the therapist. The therapists should have the experience and knowledge to address the problem (Campbell & Miller, 2011). The interaction allows changing and examining grandiose and excessive vulnerable thinking. These two components influence negatively the perception of a patient with narcissistic personality disorder (Miller et al., 2014). The therapist also teaches the patient to regulate their emotions, and encourage pro-social mechanisms through correcting self-centered behaviors. The therapy comes in two forms: individual and group psychotherapy. Each of these therapies are beneficial to an individual differently, and the therapist should encourage any of the methods or both methods at the same time.
The individual psychotherapy allows treatment of patients for the symptoms such as the Axis I diagnoses rather than concentrating on the personality disorder. The therapist should be made aware of the important of patient’s psyche continuity, self-aggrandizement confrontation and allowing the patient to reconstitute an intact self-image (Campbell & Miller, 2011). Therapeutic alliance and positive transference should be relied because the patient is not in a position to acknowledge the reasons for the therapy and behalf that the patient is devalued, or the therapist is a superhuman (Miller et al., 2014). Understanding narcissistic personality style enables the therapist to interpret the occurrence of the views of the patient and provide counter-transference measures.
Group therapy allows patients to develop a health individuality so that the patient can acknowledge others and decrease the aspects of self-defeating coping mechanism (Campbell & Miller, 2011). A group brings into consideration confrontational platforms, and the group work creates an alliance of empathy, which are important for an individual (Miller et al., 2014). Structuring the group addresses the ego weakness destructive nature since the therapist is less authoritative an aspect that the patients feel like grandiosity. Emotional factors are lessened, and control of regression is viable resulting better setting for clarification and confrontation (Campbell & Miller, 2011). The major issue associated with such patients is the aspect of self-worth and when the team maintains and manages this component, relieve to the patient is possible.
Medication is sometimes used to assist in the management of the symptoms (Miller et al., 2014). For example, depression can be treated with medication since it is one of the components that make the condition worse for the patient. Other medications that can used to management other symptoms associated with narcissistic personality disorder include mood stabilizers and antipsychotics (Campbell & Miller, 2011). Therefore, medication is available for treatment of other symptoms and not the actual mental disorder.
In conclusion, the narcissistic personal disorder makes an individual to feel less valued and can view negative communication with other parties. The disorder does not have medication, but there are medications that can be used to treat symptoms associated with the disorder. Some of the medications include antipsychotics, antidepressants and mood stabilizers. The therapists in talk therapy should understand the patient and employ strategies that influence the patient positively. Group and individual therapies may be used to assist the patients, and both come with different benefits, which a therapist should understand.
- Campbell, W. K., & Miller, J. D. (2011). The handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. John Wiley & Sons.
- Miller, J. D., McCain, J., Lynam, D. R., Few, L. R., Gentile, B., MacKillop, J., & Campbell, W. K. (2014). A comparison of the criterion validity of popular measures of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder via the use of expert ratings. Psychological assessment, 26(3), 958.
