Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment - article by Good English Article Sites

Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment

One of the first books published on borderline personality disorder was titled I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, which is an apt way of summarizing what borderline personality disorder (BPD) entails. People sometimes mistakenly associate unstable back-and-forth moods with bipolar disorder—borderline personality disorder fits that M.O. more accurately. Borderline personality disorder is named such because early in its conception psychologists described patients with the condition as being on the borderline between neurosis (impaired functioning) and psychosis (losing touch with reality). Since then, some believe that “borderline” is a misnomer because this differentiation of mental illness is outdated and borderline personality disorder is a condition that has more to do with emotional instability and dysregulation. Also, some find the term stigmatizing. Nevertheless, “borderline personality disorder” continues to stick.

Borderline personality disorder treatment can be difficult to implement—it’s one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat because of the nature of its symptoms. Symptoms of borderline personality disorder include fear of abandonment, unstable self-image, back-and-forth extremes of love and hate in interpersonal relationships, unstable intense moods, impulsive behavior, high rejection sensitivity, and paranoid/delusional thinking. Patients may sometimes manipulate others in response to perceived rejection. They might engage in attention-seeking behavior like attempting suicide to prevent people from leaving them. Borderline personality disorder treatment is made difficult because patients might exhibit this behavior toward their therapists out of fear that their therapists will reject or abandon them. In response, therapists might unconsciously distance themselves emotionally from their patients.

Borderline personality disorder treatment mainly involves therapy. Borderline personality disorder has been found to have a high correlation with traumatic experiences like abuse, neglect, and separation. There are many different types of therapy available that focus on different aspects like building self-esteem, developing interpersonal skills, emotional regulation, modifying distorted thinking, and coping with environmental conflict and stress. There also appear to be biological factors that might contribute to borderline personality disorder—patients have an imbalance of neurotransmitters that deal with mood, and increased activation in parts of the brain dealing with fear and impulsivity/aggression. Medication is also available as a borderline personality disorder treatment, and it can treat distorted thinking, stabilize moods or treat the symptoms of co-morbid disorders like depression and anxiety that are common in patients.

More studies need to be conducted on borderline personality disorder treatment, as it is one of the least researched fields of clinical psychology, given the difficulty in doing so. However, treatment still continues to improve and so does the scientific perception of borderline personality disorder itself. The challenge of research is accommodating and building upon these factors.

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