Borderline personality disorder – a response to trauma

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) does not mention trauma as a diagnostic factor in BPD, despite the inextricable link between BPD and trauma. This adds to viewing BPD as what its name suggests it is – a personality disorder.

Instead, BPD is better thought of as a trauma-spectrum disorder – similar to chronic or complex PTSD.

The similarities between complex PTSD and BPD are numerous. Patients with both conditions have difficulty regulating their emotions; they experience persistent feelings of emptiness, shame, and guilt; and they have a significantly elevated risk of suicide.

Thinking about BPD in terms of its underlying cause would help us treat its cause rather than its symptoms and would reinforce the importance of preventing child abuse and neglect in the first place.

If we started thinking about it as a trauma-spectrum condition, patients might start being viewed as victims of past injustice, rather than perpetrators of their own misfortune.

BPD is a difficult condition to treat, and the last thing we need to do is to make it harder for patients and their families.