A wild fan theory of mental health of cartoon characters.

Note: this post is just for fun and based on studying personality disorders for fun. I know enough to be dangerous, basically. These are cartoon characters who don't suffer as profoundly as real people do, and neither do they change all that much except in satisfying ways that are quite unlike therapy and social support for change.

Pearl is the BPD/OCPD (comorbidity) version of Peggy Hill, who is the NPD version of Pearl.

Explanations:

1. BPD stands for Borderline personality disorder. Fragile sense of self and emotional volatility are some of the key characteristics.
2. OCPD stands for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (surprisingly little to do with OCD). Very neat and organized to a perfectionistic degree, rigidly ritualistic, attention to details and need for control.
3. NPD stands for narcissistic personality disorder. Poor self-esteem cloaked in grandiosity, fantasies of intelligence, beauty and success, arrogance and lack of empathy towards others.

Bill suffers from dysthymic personality disorder - a pretty constant state of low mood. An outcome of that is being a slob. He never the less seeks out pleasure occasionally and isn't that anxious in relating to other people, so he's not schizoid, for example.

Dale suffers from paranoid personality disorder - or would, but he's not that anxious about it.

Khan is canonically bipolar, but is perhaps better described as cyclothymic or bipolar type 2 as Khan's supposed mania is quite productive and thus might be better called hypomania. Cyclothymia is at least superficially similar to bipolar disorder, but is less severe with higher lows and lower highs.