It’s the most dramatized of the personality disorders, but one of the least understood. This week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen clears the air with nine signs of borderline personality disorder.
Besides Glenn Close, the original bunny boiler in Fatal Attraction, other Hollywood portrayals of Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, have included, among others, Kristen Wiig in Welcome To Me and Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen. But each portrayal is only one view; indeed, with five of nine symptoms required for diagnosis, there are dozens of ways to have BPD (plus, put a Hollywood filter on any psychological disorder and you’ll almost always end up with the funhouse mirror version).
So what exactly is “borderline” about BPD, besides, perhaps, our understanding and portrayals? BPD was originally thought to be “on the border” of a psychotic disorder, like schizophrenia, and a mood disorder, like depression. And while BPD is now an established disorder in its own right, the name has stuck for the millions of Americans it affects.
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