Objective: Borderline personality disorder is a disabling and dramatic psychiatric condition. To date, its pathophysiology remains unclear. Scientific evidence seems to have found underlying, nonfocal, central nervous system dysfunction in borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.
BPD has been linked to the amygdala and limbic systems of the brain, the centres that control emotion and, particularly, rage, fear and impulsive automatic reactions.
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.
That's not true! Although it is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, such as what happens during a depressive episode, BPD does have biological foundations. BPD develops partly from having a highly sensitive nervous system.
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.
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.
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.
Childhood trauma such as sexual, emotional, or physical abuse also may lead to the onset of borderline personality disorder. Unstable relationships are a main symptom of BPD , and children with traumatic backgrounds or unhealthy family relationships may be more prone to developing BPD later in life.
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.
Stressful or traumatic life events
Often having felt afraid, upset, unsupported or invalidated. Family difficulties or instability, such as living with a parent or carer who experienced an addiction. Sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect. Losing a parent.
Borderline personality disorder often occurs with other mental illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These co-occurring disorders can make it harder to diagnose and treat borderline personality disorder, especially if symptoms of other illnesses overlap with symptoms of the disorder.
Relationships and BPD Rage
Anger that is intense, uncontrolled or inappropriate can be a devastating symptom for someone who has BPD. They may be driven by a desire to be connected to others, yet loss of emotional control frequently drives others away. In some cases, the level of rage experienced can lead to violence.
BPD is a very different diagnosis than schizophrenia, though the two can co-exist. While BPD is characterized by a pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships; schizophrenia is characterized by a range of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dysfunctions.
Psychotic symptoms in BPD are common and phenomenologically similar to those experienced by schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Despite their prevalence in BPD patients, knowledge of the characteristics and severity of hallucinations is limited, especially in modalities other than auditory.
BPD features are highly represented in subjects with psychopathy as well as psychopathic traits are highly prevalent in patients with BPD.
With the right treatment, many people with BPD learn to manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life. Without treatment, people with borderline personality disorder have an increased risk of the following: Substance use disorder and alcohol use disorder. Depression.
Patients with BPD are characterized by great emotional reactivity, high degrees of impulsivity, recurring self-destructive behaviors, inappropriate levels of anger, intense and unstable relationships with others, and a sense of emptiness and confusion about their own identities.
Research has shown that the prognosis for BPD is actually not as bad at once thought. Almost half of people who are diagnosed with BPD will not meet the criteria for a diagnosis just two years later. Ten years later, 88% of people who were once diagnosed with BPD no longer meet the criteria for a diagnosis.
Limited therapeutic effectiveness of antidepressants in BPD may be related to lack of serotonin receptor specificity, since 5-HT2A but not 5-HT2C antagonism is associated with decreasing impulsivity.
Some people with BPD may meet the criteria for the NDIS, some have been approved already, many have not. It is possible for people to recover from BPD however, and to go onto the NDIS, it is required you have a permanent disability this is one of the challenges faced with being eligible for the NDIS.
ADHD and BPD share many symptoms, which demand a challenging differential diagnosis. Because ADHD was rarely diagnosed in inattentive women until relatively recently, many lived with a misdiagnosis of BPD.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common condition that is characterized by a host of different challenges and symptoms. One experience that's frequently associated with borderline personality disorder is anxiety; and often people with BPD are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder as well.
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.