Current trends in the unfavorable clinical and social dynamics of personality disorders in problematic internet use
Despite the high prevalence of typical variants of negative clinical and social dynamics of personality disorders in the form of delinquent behavior, drug addiction, alcoholism and pathological gambling, today the problematic use of the Internet is becoming increasingly important in the trajectory of social maladjustment of patients with personality disorders (PD). Overuse of the world wide web easily allows one to distance oneself from the real social, interpersonal and emotional problems that are so common in patients with PD. Objective: to study the clinical phenomenology of problematic use of the Internet as a modern form of unfavorable clinical and social dynamics of personality disorders. Material and Methods. Two groups of patients are studied using clinical-psychopathological, psychometric, and statistical methods. The main group consists of 167 males (mean age 19.7±2.4 years) with a verified personality disorder. The control group consists of 80 healthy males (mean age 19.6±2.8 years). Results and Discussion. According to statistics using Pearson's x2 test, personality disorder is a statistically significant (p<0.005) predictor of problematic Internet use. Within the main group, problematic Internet use is detected in half of the cases (n=88, 51.5%) in the form of 3 clinical variants: in a quarter (n=40, 24.5%) of cases, there is Internet addiction, in 17.2% (n=32) cases, the Internet is used as a coping strategy for the decompensation of personality disorder; in 9.8% (n=16) cases, there is a specific personality development of the digital autism type. At the same time, the option of digital autisation is the most unfavorable in view of the greatest negative impact on the indicators of the social functioning of patients. In the control group, problematic Internet use is detected in isolated (n=4.5%) cases in the form of Internet addiction. Conclusion. The presented variants of problematic use of the Internet, observed with unfavorable dynamics of personality disorders, have unique clinical and psychopathological characteristics. Accurate verification of the clinical variant of problematic Internet use will allow for a more differentiated selection of personalized preventive and therapeutic interventions.