Walking a Difficult Line: Taking a Look at Borderline Personality Disorder Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) live a difficult. These are people for whom maintaining normal interpersonal relationships, controlling anger, suffer from extreme insecurity and drastic mood swings, among other symptoms. They make up only 2% of the population, but they suffer from a disorder that the psychiatric and scientific community struggles to recognize and has great difficulty treating. (4) Individuals with BPD suffer from a range of symptoms that include the following: dramatic mood changes, depression, irritability, uncontrollable anger, negative impulsivity (which includes reckless sex, substance abuse, binge eating), suicidal feelings, self-mutilation , extreme self-doubt about one's abilities. (6)(3) They also experience a sort of heightened awareness of their environment and are therefore overly stimulated by it. (1) In addition to these and other symptoms, individuals with BPD often also suffer from other mental disorders – such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders – which make their BPD difficult to diagnose. (4) There is a great mystery surrounding the causes of all mental disorders, and this is also the case with bipolar disorder. Psychologists and scientists believe that it is both a biological and psychological disease and that borderline personality disorder as a disease is closely related to depression rather than schizophrenia, which however was the previous one. Experts also believe that attention deficit disorders could be a causal factor, as well as childhood abuse or neglect. (6) Many people with bipolar disorder experience strong feelings of abandonment from parents, family and friends, which may be triggered by an incident...... half of article ......lineresearch.org /4) National Institute of Mental Health, BPD article "Raising Questions, Finding Answers" http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bpd.cfm5) National Institute of Mental Health, BPD article "Concept for Borderline Personality Disorder Initiative in FY 2003" " Research Initiative http://www.nimh.nih.gov/council/cncptcuthbert_901.cfm6) National Alliance for the Mentally Ill on BPD site http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm? Section=By_Illness&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay .cfm&TPLID=54&ContentID=230407) Dr. Linehan's DBT Treatment Course ("A Promising Treatment...")http://www.mclean.harvard.edu/psychupdate/psyupI-3.htmMore Information:8) More Information based on BPD http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?id=476&type=doc&cn=Personality%20Disorders9) More information on DBT (treatment) http://www.priory.com/dbt.htm