Let's focus on the sometimes-confused conditions of Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). In a snapshot, they can look similar—both can present with impulsive behavior, intense emotions and suicidal thinking.
BPD and bipolar disorder are often confused or misdiagnosed for one another. You may also be diagnosed with one of these conditions when you actually have an entirely different mental health condition.
With bipolar disorders, mood swings occur during an episode and are more random- these episodes can last for extended periods. With borderline personality disorder, symptoms can be triggered at any time, and these individuals tend to cycle through extreme mood swings faster.
Borderline personality disorder can commonly be confused with bipolar disorder, largely because of the overlapping symptoms of impulsivity, mood instability, inappropriate anger, and suicidal threats (4).
A common misdiagnosis and coexisting disorder with BPD are bipolar disorders. Both conditions have crossover traits that can be difficult to distinguish from one another. However, both disorders are conceptualised differently: BPD as a personality disorder and bipolar disorders as a brain disease.
How are personality disorders treated? Personality disorders are some of the most difficult disorders to treat in psychiatry. This is mainly because people with personality disorders don't think their behavior is problematic, so they don't often seek treatment.
Bipolar is one of the most frequently misdiagnosed mental health issues. Somewhere between 1.4 and 6.4 percent of people worldwide are affected by bipolar disorder. However, it's hard to say which number is more accurate due to the frequency of wrongful diagnosis.
The most common misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder is major depressive disorder (MDD). The symptoms of major depression last for at least two weeks and can include: persistent feelings of sadness or low mood.
Someone with BPD may go to great lengths to feel something, as well as becoming increasingly withdrawn and avoidant during an episode. Paranoid thoughts of everyone being out to get them and hating them are also common during these times. Episodes can also be extreme highs, bursts of euphoria and positive emotions.
People with BPD score low on cognitive empathy but high on emotional empathy. This suggests that they do not easily understand other peoples' perspectives, but their own emotions are very sensitive. This is important because it could align BPD with other neurodiverse conditions.
Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.
People with BPD also have a tendency to think in extremes, a phenomenon called "dichotomous" or “black-or-white” thinking. 3 People with BPD often struggle to see the complexity in people and situations and are unable to recognize that things are often not either perfect or horrible, but are something in between.
The severity of elated phases never reaches level of manic or manic mixed states, and remains at clinical or sub- threshold hypomanic level. Patients with soft bipolarity are often referred to as "pseudo-unipolar depression", and may go undetected for years.
Not only is BPD one of the most painful mental illnesses, but it's also intensified by stigma and being misunderstood by others. Fortunately, borderline personality disorder is a treatable condition, and the pain doesn't have to be endless.
Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPDs) become overwhelmed and incapacitated by the intensity of their emotions, whether it is joy and elation or depression, anxiety, and rage. They are unable to manage these intense emotions.
- Depression affects more people than any other mental disorder and is also one of the world's leading causes of disability. Although it is a treatable disease, six out of every ten people who have depression in Latin America and the Caribbean do not seek or do not receive the treatment they need.
Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age.
Another hallmark of borderline personality disorder is having a favorite person—usually a family member, romantic partner, or someone in a supportive role, such as a teacher or coach. For someone with this type of BPD relationship, a “favorite person” is someone they rely on for comfort, happiness, and validation.
Those with BPD experiencing dissociation often feel lost, scared, and detached from reality. While dissociation is not the primary symptom of BPD, it is one of the symptoms that make getting treatment for BPD all the more urgent.
In particular, there is evidence that BPD is commonly misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder, Type 2.