CASE STUDY-1

Personality Psychology
About this Assignment

This assignment will result in a culmination of all that you have learned throughout the duration
of this course. You will be asked to make several decisions based on what you have studied
thus far. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers, but it is VERY important that you can back up
your decisions with information from other sources of information.

Case Study Prompt

Read the following case study on a patient who was diagnosed with a personality disorder:

Jodie is a 31-year old woman who comes to you for treatment. She states that the reason she is
there is to get her anger under control, and that in her last several relationships with men, she
has been guilty of hitting her boyfriends and/or throwing things at them. She states that she
doesn't know why she does this because she 'really loved all of them.' During the course of
your conversation, you discover that she has been married and divorced three times, and in the
last year, has had 4 'serious' relationships. Also, she tells you that she has had two past suicide
attempts (pill overdoses) in response to 'bad breakups' with various boyfriends and husbands.
Jodie is also both a compulsive shopper and compulsive eater. She has been known to max out
her credit cards on shopping binges, and she has a habit of binging and purging. She states that
she mostly engages in these kinds of behavior when her relationships are 'getting bad.' She tells
you that when she is in a relationship, it's very intense and that her whole world looks brighter,
yet when the relationship begins to crumble, she goes through periods of intense depression
and suicidal thoughts and has even resorted, more than once, to falsely telling her
husband/boyfriend that she was pregnant in order to try to salvage the relationship. She states
that she has two goals in therapy: to get a handle on her anger issues and to try to resolve these
feelings of intense emptiness she has.

Jodie is exhibiting classic symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder and meets most of the
criteria outlined in the DSM 5 (she easily meets 6 of the 9 criteria).

Questions for Discussion:

After having read the case study:

1. What you have learned to back up your answers?

2. Think about what your next steps are to treat Jodie.
3. Which prominent personality traits does this patient appear to exhibit?
4. Provide a summary of your findings and a rudimentary treatment plan for this patient. Be
sure to explain your intent.

Note: You may refer to other sources to support your explanation.

 CASE STUDY-2
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Victor is a 27-year-old man who comes to you for help at the urging of his fiancée. He was an
infantryman with a local Marine Reserve unit who was honorably discharged in 2014 after
serving two tours of duty in Iraq. His fiancé has told him he has “not been the same” since his
second tour of duty and it is impacting their relationship. Although he offers few details, upon
questioning he reports that he has significant difficulty sleeping, that he “sleeps with one eye
open” and, on the occasions when he falls into a deeper sleep, he has nightmares. He endorses
experiencing several traumatic events during his second tour, but is unwilling to provide
specific details – he tells you he has never spoken with anyone about them and he is not sure
he ever will. He spends much of his time alone because he feels irritable and doesn’t want to
snap at people. He reports to you that he finds it difficult to perform his duties as a security
guard because it is boring and gives him too much time to think. At the same time, he is easily
startled by noise and motion and spends excessive time searching for threats that are never
confirmed both when on duty and at home. He describes having intrusive memories about his
traumatic experiences on a daily basis but he declines to share any details. He also avoids seeing
friends from his Reserve unit because seeing them reminds him of experiences that he does not
want to remember.

Questions for Discussion:

1.Identify the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in Victor

2. Think about what your next steps are to treat Victor

3. Provide a summary of your findings and a rudimentary treatment plan for this patient. Be
sure to explain your intent.
 CASE STUDY-3
BULIMIA NERVOSA

Sage is a 26-year-old doctoral candidate in English literature at the local university. She is in
good standing in her program and has plans to enter the job market in the fall. In your intake,
she tells you she thinks she is “fat” and has been self-conscious about her body since the sixth
grade, at which time she began menstruating and developing breasts earlier than the other girls
in her class. She was teased for needing a bra and remembers feeling “chubby, too big, and just
wanting to be small like [her] younger sister.” She started dieting in the seventh grade,
following strict rules for weeks (e.g., she recalls the grapefruit only diet), then transitioning
into what she called “bad” weeks. During these times, she would stock up on candy bars and
other snack foods and eat them, often in her bedroom late at night. Her parents became
concerned and tried to strictly limit her dieting. This led to eating “normal” during the day and
binging on those candy bars she kept hidden in her bedroom at night if she felt sad, scared, or
mad. She grew into a habit of eating to feel better – relief that was only temporary, as she would
feel ashamed about what she had done and resolve to not do it again. In college, her pattern of
emotional eating continued, which felt more distressing to her because of the pressure to look
“as pretty and thin as the other girls??” In spring of her freshman year she experimented with
throwing up after the late-night eating and found that, at least in the minutes that followed, she
felt like she had much more control and believed this would help her to prevent the weight gain
she so dreaded. She fell into a vicious cycle of late-night binges (typically consuming about 7
candy bars in 15 minutes, during which times Sage described feeling very out of control)
followed by making herself throw up. In college, she engaged in these binge-purge episodes
about 6 nights/week. At present, she is having a harder time hiding the episodes because she
lives with her boyfriend; she estimates that they occur about 4 nights per week. The times when
she feels the most compelled to binge and purge are when she has a major presentation coming
up in her doctoral program and when she gets in a fight with her boyfriend. Her BMI is in the
normal range, but she says she needs to lose weight. She wants to stop binging and purging
because she does not want her boyfriend to find out, but she is also afraid that if she stops, she
will gain weight.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Identify the symptoms of bulimia nervosa disorder in Sage

2. Think about what your next steps are to treat Sage

3. Provide a summary of your findings and a rudimentary treatment plan for this patient. Be
sure to explain your intent
 CASE STUDY-4
SOCIAL ANXIETY
Mike is a 20 year-old who reports to you that he feels depressed and is experiencing a
significant amount of stress about school, noting that he’ll “probably flunk out.” He spends
much of his day in his dorm room playing video games and has a hard time identifying what,
if anything, is enjoyable in a typical day. He rarely attends class and has avoided reaching out
to his professors to try to salvage his grades this semester. Mike has always been a self-
described shy person and has had a very small and cohesive group of friends from elementary
through high school. Notably, his level of stress significantly amplified when he began college.
You learn that when meeting new people, he has a hard time concentrating on the interaction
because he is busy worrying about what they will think of him – he assumes they will find him
“dumb,” “boring,” or a “loser.” When he loses his concentration, he stutters, is at a loss for
words, and starts to sweat, which only serves to make him feel more uneasy. After the
interaction, he replays the conversation over and over again, focusing on the “stupid” things he
said. Similarly, he has a long-standing history of being uncomfortable with authority figures
and has had a hard time raising his hand in class and approaching teachers. Since starting
college, he has been isolating more, turning down invitations from his roommate to go eat or
hang out, ignoring his cell phone when it rings, and habitually skipping class. His concerns
about how others view him are what drive him to engage in these avoidance behaviors. After
conducting your assessment, you give the patient feedback that you believe he has social
anxiety disorder, which should be the primary treatment target. You explain that you see his
fear of negative evaluation, and his thoughts and behaviors surrounding social situations, as
driving his increasing sense of hopelessness, isolation, and worthlessness.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Identify the symptoms of social anxiety in Mike

2. Think about what your next steps are to treat Mike

3. Provide a summary of your findings and a rudimentary treatment plan for this patient. Be
sure to explain your intent
 Case Study 5

Surrogacy and Baby Manjhi

Japanese couple Ikufumi Yamada (husband) and Yuki Yamada (wife) traveled to India in late
2007 to discuss with fertility specialist Dr. Nayna Patel their desire to hire a surrogate mother
to bear a child for them. The doctor arranged a surrogacy contract with Pritiben Mehta, a
married Indian woman with children. Dr. Patel supervised the creation of an embryo from
Ikufumi Yamada’s sperm and an egg harvested from an anonymous Indian woman. The
embryo was then implanted into Mehta’s womb.

In June 2008, the Yamadas divorced, and a month later Baby Manji was born to the surrogate
mother. Ikufumi’s wife Yuki (who was not genetically related to the baby) didn't want the baby.
Also, Pritiben Mehta did not want take care of the child saying that the contract had ended.
Suddenly, Baby Manji had three mothers—the intended mother who had contracted for the
surrogacy, the egg donor, and the gestational surrogate—yet legally she had none.

Both the parentage and the nationality of Baby Manji were impossible to determine under
existing definitions of family and citizenship under Indian and Japanese law. Nor did any
existing laws help to clarify the matter. Japanese law didn't recognize surrogacy and Indian
Law wouldn't allow a single man to adopt a baby child.

While the biological father wanted to claim the baby, he was prevented by a legal system which
had no provision for children born via surrogacy. After a prolonged legal battle, Ikufumi
Yamada's mother, (who had come to India to look after the child she considered her grandchild,
after her son's Indian visa expired,) left for Japan with Baby Manji.

Questions:

1. Do you think that surrogacy is ethical? Why?

2. Do you think that the conduct of Pritiben Mehta (gestational surrogate mother) ethical?

3. Do you think that the conduct of Yuki Yamada unethical?

4. Comment on the ethical aspect of Dr. Nayna Patel’s course of actions. Was it ethically
correct for Dr. Patel to suggest surrogacy for international parents? Is it ethical to
arrange for sperm/egg donor?

5. Should sperm/egg donors be held accountable if no-one claims the baby after birth?

6. Do you think that it is ethical to ban commercial surrogacy? Why should someone like
Pritiben Mehta (who is poor and in need of money) be deprived of such an option?
Case Study 6