What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

On multiple crime-based TV shows, the term “narcissist” is often used to refer to criminals who display psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies. In everyday life, “narcissist” is defined as being vain or thinking too highly of oneself. However, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is an actual psychological diagnosis that occurs more often than people think.      Displaying confidence in oneself is not what characterizes NPD. Instead, just like other personality disorders, NPD has […]

Inside the Brains of Psychopaths

Continuing on from my last mental health blog post “Sociopaths are not Psychopaths,” this blog post will focus in on one specific difference between the two groups of -paths. One major physical difference is discovered in the human brain in relation to how much brain activity a person exhibits. Many psychopaths display a distinctive pattern of brain activity after receiving PET scans. The scans below display reduced activity in an […]

What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?

Rice University’s perspective on mental health is incredibly positive and helpful to students. As a student myself, I truly believe I would not be in a stable state without Rice’s Wellbeing Center. In my first semester, I learned about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Many people I love have either suffered from BPD or known someone who deals with it now or has in the past. One of my close friends […]