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Borderline Personality Disorder

The hallmarks of Borderline Personality Disorder are:

- Intense fear of abandonment, both real and imagined

- A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships

- Chronic feelings of emptiness and feeling of boredom.

- Impulsivity that are potentially self-damaging

- Recurrent suicidal behaviour and threats

- Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger

- Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation

- Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

- Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood

There is considerable variability in the course of Borderline Personality Disorder. The impairment from the disorder and the risk of suicide are greatest in the young-adult years and gradually wane with advancing age. During their thirties and forties, the majority of individuals attain greater stability in their relationship and vocational functioning.

Most research showed that borderline patients improve in the long-term, decreasing in suicidality, self-destructiveness, and interpersonal maladjustment, if survival is effectively managed during the turbulent years of youth.

Patients who received outpatient psychotherapy according to clearly described therapeutic principles improved significantly when compared to those who had no formal psychotherapy.

Pharmacotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder should be directed at the severity of the symptoms in each of the four groups (mainly: affective, impulsive, ego-interpersonal and psychotic) rather than by the presence or absence of the overall syndrome.

However, pharmacotherapy must always refer to a supportive therapeutic interaction between the treating physician and the patient.