Borderline Personality Study

Patients with borderline personality disorder are characterized by their dramatic mood swings and persistent feelings of instability and insecurity. Their insecurities and sense of instability correlate to the common symptom of desperation to avoid abandonment by friends and family; the patients are often frantic in their efforts to escape perceived abandonment regardless of its practical likelihood. Patients’ interpersonal relationships are stormy with intense ups and downs, especially in their perception of the other person, which can quickly alternate between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Patients may have majorly distorted and unstable self-image or sense of identity; these factors can affect or result in sudden changes in moods,

A study following at-risk teenage girls of ages sixteen to eighteen tracked cumulative exposure to adversities including poverty, single-parent household status, and difficult life conditions. The girls’ negative emotional reactivity was monitored through self-report and measured emotional responses to stressors. The previously mentioned family adversities predicted an increase in negative emotionality and strengthened the connection between this symptom and BPD, further suggesting family adversity as a risk factor in adolescents (Stepp et al.,

A study compared risk factors for borderline personality disorder with those for bipolar disorder. The experiment connected mania with sensitivity to reward, while BPD was found to relate more strongly to impulsivity and threat sensitivity (Fulford, Eisner, & Johnson, 2015). Among individuals receiving residential treatment for substance use, emotional abuse, emotional instability and vulnerability, and impulsivity were found to be unique predictors of BPD status (Bornovalova et al., 2006). The effect of anger rumination on the development and exacerbation of BPD symptoms possibly warrants research; one study examined whether childhood precursors and BPD symptom severity could be connected through tendency toward anger rumination. This study found a significant effect of anger rumination in the relationship between BPD symptom severity and self-reported childhood emotional vulnerability (Sauer-Zavala, Geiger, & Baer, 2013). The results of this study and similar attempting to determine trait-based risk factors are interesting but likely not objectively reliable, as they are widely retrospective and based on self-reports of patients, who by the nature of BPD have a tendency toward deception or sensitivity toward their