Borderline Personality Disorder: Pathogenesis and Clinical Findings Behavioral Traits: • Unstable Relationships - Alternating extremes of idealization and devaluation • Impulsivity - Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging such as sex, drugs, financial spending • Suicidal Behaviours - Recurrent suicidal behaviour gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior • Avoid Abandonment - Frantic efforts to avoid both real and imagined abandonment Cognitive-Emotional: • Dissociative / Paranoid - Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms • Unstable Mood - Affective instability due to marked reactivity of mood (eg. dysphoria/ irritability/anxiety lasting hours to days) • Anger - Intense and inappropriate, or difficulty controlling • Unstable Self-image - Markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self • Feelings of Emptiness - Chronically experienced BPD Mnemonic: AM SUICIDE - Abandonment (fear of) - Mood instability - Suicide attempts/ideation - Unstable relationships - Impulsivity - Control of anger (poor) - Identity disturbances - Dissociate/paranoid when stressed - Empty feeling Dx: >5 of the above with symptoms noted since adolescence, inflexible pattern across multiple environments causing marked social impairment #BPD #Borderline #PersonalityDisorder #Diagnosis #Psychiatry #Criteria #Signs #Symptoms #Mnemonic #AMSUICIDE
