Borderline Personality Disorder Essay

Borderline personality disorder, also commonly abbreviated to BPD, is a serious mental disorder notable for both emotional instability as well as instabilities within relationships. BPD usually starts in adolescence or early adulthood ‒although symptoms may begin showing in early childhood‒ (NIMH), and affects between 1.6 and 5.9% of the U.S. population (NAMI). Its smaller numbers, however, may be attributed to the fact that it is only a fairly recent disorder; BPD was first recorded as a diagnosable illness by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition in 1980 (DSM-III). BPD was named after the widespread belief by experts that the disorder was merely an abnormal, or ‘borderline’, version of other mental illnesses; this belief was due to several cases of minor psychotic episodes that had never been attributed to other cases of mental disorders. However, developments in modern psychology have deemed this name to be a misnomer, as BPD is now deemed to be its own illness (NIMH). In recent years, some professionals may refer to BPD as “Emotionally Unstable Disorder”, although there …show more content…
Borderline people seem to have a stark black-and-white idea of relationships, as a good one is perfect, but a bad one is doomed (“Borderline Personality Disorder - Symptoms), as well as fluctuate between incredibly positive thoughts on a relationship, called idealization, and inconceivably negative thoughts, or devaluation, on the same relationship