Dependent personality disorder is characterized by a long-standing need for the person to be taken care of and a fear of being abandoned or separated from important individuals in his or her life. This leads the person to engage in dependent and submissive behaviors that are designed to elicit care-giving behaviors in others. The dependent behavior may be see as being “clingy” or “clinging on” to others, because the person fears they can’t live their lives without the help of others.
People with dependent personality disorders have two basic characteristics :
i) They passively allow people to make important decisions of their life because they lack confidence.
ii) They subordinate their own needs to the needs and demands of others just to ensure that they don’t lose their dependent positions.
The possible cause of this disorder is subscribed to a biopsychosocial model of causation — that is, the causes of are likely due to biological and genetic factors, social factors (such as how a person interacts in their early development with their family and friends and other children), and psychological factors (the individual’s personality and temperament, shaped by their environment and learned coping skills to deal with stress). This suggests that no single factor is responsible — rather, it is the complex and likely intertwined nature of all three factors that are important. If a person has this personality disorder, research suggests that there is a slightly increased risk for this disorder to be “passed down” to their children.
Treatment of dependent personality disorder typically involves long-term psychotherapy with a therapist that has experience in treating this kind of personality disorder.