Borderline personality disorder is associated with significant impairment, especially in relation to the capacity to sustain stable relationships as a result of personal and emotional instability. For many the severity of symptoms and behaviours that characterise borderline personality disorder correlate with the severity of personal, social and occupational impairments. However, this is not always the case, and some people with what appears to be, in other ways, marked borderline personality disorder may be able to function at very high levels in their careers (Stone, 1993). Many, but not all, people with borderline personality disorder recurrently harm themselves, usually to provide relief from intolerable distress, which for many can lead to significant physical impairment and disability. Moreover, suicide is still common in people with borderline personality disorder and may occur several years after the first presentation of symptoms (Paris & Zweig-Frank, 2001).
Comorbidities
Borderline personality disorder is a heterogeneous condition and its symptoms overlap considerably with depressive, schizophrenic, impulsive, dissociative and identity disorders. This overlap is also linked to comorbidity and in clinical practice it is sometimes difficult to determine if the presenting symptoms are those of borderline personality disorder or a related comorbid condition. The main differences between the core symptoms of borderline personality disorder and other conditions are that the symptoms of borderline personality disorder undergo greater fluctuation and variability: psychotic and paranoid symptoms are transient, depressive symptoms change dramatically over a short period, suicidal ideas may be intense and unbearable but only for a short time, doubts about identity may occur but are short-lived, and disturbances in the continuity of self-experiences are unstable. For each of the equivalent comorbid disorders there is much greater consistency of these symptoms.
cluster B personality disorders (histrionic, narcissistic and antisocial). In addition, there is considerable overlap between borderline personality disorder and mood and anxiety disorders (Tyrer et al., 1997; Zanarini et al., 1998).
[ad_2]
source
-
-
-
-
