Impairment and Distress Caused by Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality disorder is a disorder that makes things such as social norms and dynamics of relationships difficult to understand. Borderline Personality Disorder gets its name from history because they considered this disorder to be on the “borderline” between neurosis and psychosis. This disorder approximately affects two percent of the population and is most predominately found in women. BPD is a diagnosis that has historically been difficult to understand, and even more difficult to treat successfully. This is also generally confused with the mental disorder known as Schizophrenia. The symptoms of BPD are typically correlated with painful mix of emotional turmoil, unstable relationships and self-destructive behavior, including suicide attempts. A person with borderline personality disorder has feelings of abandonment and emptiness, and has frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, going to extremes to keep someone from leaving.

One’s self that is affected with BPD is emotionally unstable and forms intense but unstable interpersonal relationships. Amad, Ramoz, Thomas, Jardri and Gorwood interrogated the question if borderline personality disorder runs in families through genetics. Even though it was not stated borderline personality disorder was first diagnosed as an illness in 1980. Borderline personality disorder is a common mental disability that causes someone to experience unstable moods and occasionally have psychotic episodes. Gene-environment interaction which is when 2 different genotypes respond to different environmental variation in different ways. Plasticity genes defines the ability of an organism to change its phenotype in response to changes in the environment. A phenotype is a set of observable characters of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. While a genotype is the genetic makeup of an organism. Polymorphism is another term used which is the presences of genetic variation within a population, upon which natural selection can operate. Many studies performed on this subject which were often cited and compared with Amad’s et al. study.

Regarding the methods, Amad et al. used quantitative research by analyzing data to figure percentages and likely hood of borderline personality disorder running in families. Amad et al. choose patients 18 years or older with borderline personality disorder, the diagnostics were made according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria. Meta-analyses, a method for combining study data from multiple studies, was performed if two or more studies testing the same polymorphism were available. They analyzed the frequency of borderline personality disorder is in the relatives of the subject with borderline personality disorder and compared it to the general population of a healthy subject’s family line. Twin studies were then done to weigh in environmental factors as well as genetic.

After the study the results showed that familial factors contribute to borderline personality disorder. The proband with borderline personality disorder had a 3.9 times higher risk of borderline personality disorder in relatives than those without borderline personality disorder. However, this was different in one study done by Pope et al. (1983) which only showed a. 8 difference. The twin study showed that the heritability of borderline personality disorder is 40%.

Amad’s studies revealed that genetics does play a role in borderline personality disorder. The results are true to Amad’s et al. hypothesis that genetic involvement arises in families of those with borderline personality disorder. Limitations faced were that samples were retrieved from patient population and often the same interviewed conducted all of the interviews. There were also only a limited number of twin pair samples which limited the results. There are plans for other studies to use different methods and extend the twin study method. Some recommendations stated for further research are to use new gene candidates, use larger samples, and improve the measurement of environmental factors.

In conclusion, borderline personality disorder is very serious due to the amount of impairment and distress amongst the person. There is a combination of psychosocial and biological factors that may attribute to the development of borderline personality disorder. There is also a great amount of comorbidity with other disorders including mood, anxiety, substance use, eating disorders, and other personality disorders. Unfortunately, there is not a specific form of therapy that has been evaluated in its confidence of usefulness among men and women. More research needs to be done on this disorder but when treatment is sought out the outcomes are more promising than those who do not seek out treatment.