Dependent Personality Disorder

A personality disorder that isn’t talked about nearly enough.

Dependent personality disorder (DPD) is a personality disorder that does not get near enough attention that it needs to get. DPD is a potentially serious personality disorder that can potentially have lethal consequences (for example, a person stays with a person who is physically abusive due to the feelings and thoughts that they have with DPD).

DPD is classified as a “cluster C personality disorder”. This means in plain English that people with DPD tend to show fearful and/or anxious behaviors on a regular basis. More specifically, dependent personality disorder can be described as “a person who feels a strong, compulsive urge to be taken care of or to be dependent on another individual”. This is not limited to romantic interests. This can also occur with other types of relationships (friendships, family members, etc.). As you can imagine, having this kind of personality disorder makes leaving abusive relationships exceedingly difficult, especially if the abuser exhibits narcissistic tendencies.

One way an anonymous person with this disease has described it as “I am knowingly sticking my hand into the fire. Every day I have the borderline delusional hope that things will be different with this abusive person, but it feels like an endless…