Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

• frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment;
• a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation;
• identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self;
• impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating);
• recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior;
• affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days);
• chronic feelings of emptiness;
• inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights);
• transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Source: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
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