Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness that can cause a lot of suffering, carries a risk of suicide and needs an accurate diagnosis along with targeted treatment. But there is hope. With appropriate treatment many sufferers show improvement in one year.
Overview. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious, long-lasting and complex mental health problem. People with BPD have difficulty regulating or handling their emotions or controlling their impulses.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most damaging mental illnesses. By itself, this severe mental illness accounts for up to 10 percent of patients in psychiatric care and 20 percent of those who have to be hospitalized.
Borderline personality disorder can damage many areas of your life. It can negatively affect intimate relationships, jobs, school, social activities and self-image, resulting in: Repeated job changes or losses. Not completing an education.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has historically been seen as a lifelong, highly disabling disorder.
The Social Security Administration placed borderline personality disorder as one of the mental health disorders on its disabilities list. However, you'll have to meet specific criteria for an official disability finding. For example, you must prove that you have the symptoms of the condition.
In this study, older people with BPD were more likely to exhibit feelings of chronic emptiness and have higher degrees of social impairment. 4 They were less likely to have impulsivity, engage in self-harm, or have rapid shifts in mood.
Living with borderline personality disorder (BPD) poses some challenges. Intense emotional pain and feelings of emptiness, desperation, anger, hopelessness, and loneliness are common. These symptoms can affect every part of your life.
For example, in one study, 24% of BPD patients reported severe psychotic symptoms and about 75% had dissociative experiences and paranoid ideation. Thus, we start with an overview regarding the prevalence of psychotic symptoms in BPD patients.
Myth: BPD Is a Rare Condition
It is estimated that more than 14 million Americans have BPD, extrapolated from a large study performed in 2008. An estimated 11% of psychiatric outpatients, 20% of psychiatric inpatients, and 6% of people visiting their primary health care provider have BPD.
It is the most common personality disorder in Australia, affecting about 1 to 4 in every 100 people at some time in their lives. It's more common in women, and usually the symptoms appear in the teenage years or early adulthood.
Researchers have used MRI to study the brains of people with BPD. MRI scans use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce a detailed image of the inside of the body. The scans revealed that in many people with BPD, 3 parts of the brain were either smaller than expected or had unusual levels of activity.
A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones. A distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self. Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating.
Patients with BPD showed significantly reduced volumes of both brain structures (left hemisphere hippocampus reduced 15.7%, right hemisphere hippocampus reduced 15.8%, left hemisphere amygdala reduced 7.9% and right hemisphere amygdala reduced 7.5%).
People with BPD don't have more than one personality. BPD is a personality disorder in which you have difficulties with how you think and feel about yourself and other people, and are having problems in your life as a result of this.
BPD, Depression, and Dysthymia
One argument in favor of BPD as a form of major depression was based on the frequency of family history of depression in BPD patients. However, impulsive disorders, such as substance abuse and antisocial personality, are actually more common in families than mood disorders.
In particular, there is evidence that BPD is commonly misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder, Type 2. One study showed that 40% of people who met criteria for BPD but not for bipolar disorder were nevertheless misdiagnosed with Bipolar Type 2.
Today, near‐psychotic symptoms appear as DSM‐5 criteria in both BPD and SPD. This makes the differentiation of BPD from the schizophrenia spectrum heavily dependent on the detection and registration of the schizophrenic fundamental symptoms.
It is now clear that DSM-IV-defined BPD is a heterogeneous construct that includes patients on the mood disorder spectrum and the impulsivity spectrum (Siever and Davis, 1991), in contrast to the original speculation that these patients might be near neighbors of patients with schizophrenia or other psychoses.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is highly associated with verbal abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse, and/or domestic violence often suffered by those who are non-borderline.
Their wild mood swings, angry outbursts, chronic abandonment fears, and impulsive and irrational behaviors can leave loved ones feeling helpless, abused, and off balance. Partners and family members of people with BPD often describe the relationship as an emotional roller coaster with no end in sight.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) cannot be cured, and anyone who enters treatment looking for a quick and easy fix is bound to be disappointed. However, with treatment the symptoms of BPD can be effectively managed, monitored, and ultimately reduced in intensity, or entirely eliminated.
Recovery in borderline personality disorder (BPD) has predominantly been viewed in the context of symptom improvement and no longer meeting diagnostic criteria. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that symptom remission is a common occurrence, with remission rates ranging between 33 and 99% [1].
It is commonly believed that some features of borderline personality disorder improve as individuals reach their late 30s and 40s.
While there is no definitive cure for BPD, it is absolutely treatable. 1 In fact, with the right treatment approach, you can be well on the road to recovery and remission. While remission and recovery are not necessarily a "cure," both constitute the successful treatment of BPD.