What is Borderline Personality Disorder? Borderline Personality Disorder is a disorder characterized by problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior and unstable relationships with others. Although BPD is not diagnosed in people under age 18, teenagers often have the symptoms and can be diagnoses if the symptoms have continued for at least one year.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder often have other mental conditions such as: depression, Substance Abuse, Eating Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Panic Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and exhibit behaviors of self-harm, suicidal attempts and successful suicide attempts. When a person has two or more mental disorders or conditions it is called Dual Diagnosis, Co-occurring Disorders or Co-existing Conditions
The symptoms of BPD include:
Emotions – people with BPD feel emotions easily, more intensely and longer than a normal person. They are more sensitive to feelings of rejection and failure. They have Intense and highly changeable moods, which can last from a few hours to a few days. They also have extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived. People with BPD also have feelings of emptiness and/or boredom or inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger.
Impulsive and dangerous behavior – substance abuse, spending sprees, having unprotected sex, running away, reckless driving, binge eating, self harm and suicidal behavior.
Interpersonal relationships – People with BPD are very sensitive to how others treat them and this causes constant conflicts in relationships. They have a pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
Sense of Self – Self image fluctuates from positive to negative quickly. It is often distorted and unstable
Cognition – Due to the feeling of intense emotions, it is difficult for people with BPD to concentrate or seem distracted and sometimes disassociate from the situation or conversation. They have stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality
It is imperative to get treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. The risks are great; impulsiveness, making poor choices in social settings, suicide and self harming behaviors cannot be overlooked.
If your teenager is exhibiting several of the above symptoms contact your healthcare professional for help in determining a diagnosis.
If your teenage son has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder or a Co-existing Disorder with BPD please contact Triumph Youth Services for help.
Triumph Youth Services offers a small, highly structured family environment for youth. This family-like community promotes a social environment that takes on both therapeutic and healing properties instead of maintaining negative behaviors.
Triumph Youth Services provides a daily Life Skills Group with the goal of teaching a new set of responses to social situations, as well as how to integrate his behavior with others in the environment. They staff are trained to work with adolescents with a variety of disorders.
Contact Triumph Youth Services today. They have answers.
Reference
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder
