Borderline personality disorder
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Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a personality disorder characterized by:
- Chronic instability of emotions, self-image, relationships
- Self-destructive behaviors
- Intense fear of abandonment and emptiness
Diagnostic criteria
A pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by 5 or more of the following:
- Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
- A pattern of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
- Identity disturbance: markedly unstable self-image or sense of self
- Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
- Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
- Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense, episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Inappropriate, intense anger (temper)
- Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
Possible history of childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
75% of diagnosed cases are women