Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition that comes with extreme emotions, intense challenges with self-esteem, and difficulty forming strong, stable relationships with others. Teenagers with BPD are often angry, impulsive, and quick to believe that other people have wronged them.
Young people with BPD often harm themselves and they have a high risk of suicide. Symptoms of BPD usually show up in the teenage years. Early treatment can help people with BPD manage the disorder better.
What are the symptoms of BPD?
Symptoms of BPD include:
Unrealistic or unstable sense of self
Believing they're worthless
Regularly feeling angry, empty, or hopeless
Mood swings
Finding it hard to control emotions, especially anger
Brief, intense periods of anxiety or depression
Fear of being abandoned and desperate attempts to avoid it
Paranoid thinking
Quickly changing from loving or admiring someone to disliking or criticizing them
Impulsive behavior, such as risky driving, unsafe sex, or alcohol and substance abuse
Self-harm
Attempting suicide
How is BPD diagnosed?
A mental health professional must diagnose BPD. To be diagnosed with BPD, a person must have at least five of the symptoms listed above by the time they're a young adult.
What are the risk factors for BPD?
Kids are more likely to have BPD if they have a parent or sibling who also has BPD.
Experts view BPD as a combination of two big factors. The first is a natural tendency to get upset very easily. The second is growing up in a household that doesn't help kids learn to handle big emotions. Without support as children, young people who experience especially strong emotions may develop unhealthy ways of coping.
What is the treatment for BPD?
The best therapy for BPD isdialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). DBT teaches patients skills to manage their emotions and stop harming themselves. It's called "dialectical" because it's about learning to balance two concepts that seem like opposites: the need for acceptance and the need for change. Long-term studies show that DBT works well for BPD.
There are no medications to treat BPD. However, medication can sometimes help specific symptoms of BPD, including depression, impulsive behavior and anxiety.
Teens with BPD who are in danger of suicide are sometimes hospitalized for treatment.
Risk for other disorders
It is common for people with BPD to have other mental health disorders at the same time. Disorders that often show up with BPD include depression,bipolar disorder, substance use disorder andeating disorders.
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Don't Read This Book
De TodoI wrote this book so that some people understand a little about the disorder and also so that I could say what happens many times when I have a crisis or I just get depressed, life is usually shit but if you write it you free yourself a little...
