Mental Health Magazine: Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder is a particularly distressing condition, because there's no cure for it and there's no drug that can give a 'quick fix.'

Someone suffering acute anxiety or depression does at least have the advantage of taking Klonopin or Xanax to take the edge off their anguish for a while. With Borderline Personality Disorder, the people who suffer from it, mainly women, don't have that luxury.

One to two percent of American adults suffer from this disease, and it's reported by therapists that it's the most common of all the personality disorders that they treat. The reason isn't far to seek.

It seems that the root desire of people with BPD, their sort of 'raison d'etre,' is to find someone to care for them, to nurture them, look after them. A lot of sufferers report an abusive and/or neglected childhood. This illness starts to manifest itself in early adulthood and is less common in older people.

The big problem is that the sufferer goes to the doctor or therapist, thereby finding someone to listen to them. The doctor will prescribe medications and the therapist will do all that's possible to dig down and try to find out why the patient's acting as they do. This is fine, thinks the patient. Someone actually cares about me. So they keep going to the therapist, who may well have given them some 'homework' to do, like writing out all they can remember about their childhood.

They go back to the doctor, who sees no change in them simply because they haven't taken their medications. Why should I? they think, when I have someone to listen to me. In the end, both therapist and doctor become thoroughly fed up with them, and erroneously consider them time-wasters.

When or if they do form relationships, they're extremely intense and they expect the partner to be with them the whole time. If whomever they're with does finally leave them, they consider themselves as having been abandoned and become extremely angry.

Again, like Paranoid Schizophrenia, there are no grey areas in their life. Everything's black or white, good or evil. If they are left alone, they're liable to feel that they don't exist, that they're not real. I'm sure it must be a very alarming feeling.

Following on the heels of this, they become very impulsive, and reckless. For instance, they're likely to drive their car as fast as they possibly can. They often become very promiscuous and engage in drug abuse and drinking. They're also likely to self-mutilate to a greater or lesser degree. Occasionally, if the illness becomes really bad, they may hallucinate and develop paranoia and psychotic thinking. The symptoms of this disease are as follows.

1. They desperately try to avoid abandonment or being left on their own.
2. Because of this, they may develop a slew of very intense, but unstable, relationships.
3. Their self-image varies daily.
4. They're impulsive in at least two of the following areas; sex, spending money, drugs and alcohol, binge eating.
5. They become suicidal, either in fact or gesture.
6. Mood instability. They may become very irritable, anxious, dysphoric, (the opposite of euphoric).
7. Anger problems and fighting.

Drugs that can help are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, They should help the depression and impulsiveness. Risperidal again can help with depression and the feelings of not being real, and anticonvulsant medications for anger. It's interesting to note that depression will creep in wherever it can.

Mike Bond discussing Borderline Personality Disorder. This is a very nasty illness. There appears to be no recovery and there's no cure. Learn a lot more about various mental conditions on Mike's website at http://www.panattack.com. Read about his own experiences and don't forget to watch and listen to the video.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Bond