During the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, a psychologist diagnosed Heard with borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
A clinical and forensic psychologist has spent 12 hours with Amber Heard and reviewed the case files, leading to her diagnosis.
The psychologist, Dr Shannon Curry was approached by Depp’s legal team to “review the case materials and provide my opinions regarding anything I noticed that was consistent or even not consistent with the psychological science that exists today on intimate partner violence in Mr Depp and Ms Heard’s relationship.”
Curry told the court: “The evaluation, we spent 12 hours directly with one another. The results of Ms. Heard’s evaluations supported two diagnoses: Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder,”
“There was information that supported it from multiple sources,” she added when asked how she came to those conclusions. “I conducted testing including — one of the main tests that I used, she obtained scores that were consistent with those diagnoses and there was evidence of those diagnoses in her records and self-report [or things Heard told Curry ‘specifically’].”
“There were a couple characteristics that she noted in her self-report that were consistent with these personality disorders. The first was my own behavioural observations of her based on my self-report,” she continued.
“One of the hallmark characteristics of Histrionic Personality Disorder is an overly dramatic presentation … it tends to be very flowery, it uses a lot of descriptive words and it can go on for quite some time but really lacks any substance, so at the end, you’re left wondering what was just said. That occurred a number of times.”
Curry explained that she saw Heard quickly shift between emotions.
“She would suddenly be one way and then she would be very animated or very sad and when people are displaying emotions with this personality disorder, there’s a sense of shallowness to it,” she continued.
“People who are observing them may feel like they’re almost play-acting … part of it is the rapidness with which the person can switch emotions and also the lack of substance. Very rarely and Ms Heard did not say, ‘I feel vulnerable.'”
While Curry has performed the psych evaluation of Heard, she has not done so with Depp.
