Borderline Personality Disorder: A Definition

by Alicia Potter

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, outlines nine traits that borderline patients have in common. The presence of five or more may indicate BPD if they are long-standing, persistent, and extreme:

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by seeing people and situations in black and white (or "splitting")

An unstable sense of self

Impulsiveness in potentially self-damaging behaviors (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, driving, eating, etc.)

Suicidal or self-mutilating behavior

Intense, short-term moodiness, irritability, or anxiety

Chronic feelings of emptiness

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger

Periods of feeling removed from reality (or "dissociation)

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Alicia Potter is a freelance writer living in Boston.