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Archive for the ‘BPD’ Category

How to Spot a Girl with Borderline Personality Disorder

April 5th, 2009 25 comments

Mrs. Treasures’ article on “How to Spot a Girl with Borderline Personality Disorder” might help some of you avoid unknowingly getting involved in a relationship that is almost certain to be a very difficult one.

How to Spot a Girl with Borderline Personality Disorder
You just met the girl of your dreams. But you feel some level of discomfort in the situation. The article spots the red flags. She might have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Click for full article:
How to Spot a Girl with Borderline Personality Disorder

The article does a really good job painting the progressive phases of the relationship with a Borderline.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t know what BPD is until we’ve had children with a Borderline. Having children with one seems to often trigger abandonment issues, and that leads to really nasty divorces including being harassed by false accusations and other dirty tricks that are part of the classic BPD distortion campaign.

If you think a friend or family member might be dating or have married a Borderline, please let them know about this article. It may literally save a life.

Talking with a Borderline

March 17th, 2009 32 comments

The way victims of Borderline Personality Disorder and similar personality disorders communicate is confusing and upsetting to many. If you’ve been living with such a person, you’ll find this animation to be a common, perhaps even a tame, version of things that often happen to you. If not, it may give you some insights into how miserable Borderlines can make the lives of their loved ones.
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Brain Scans on Borderlines Show Emotional Oversensitivity

February 11th, 2009 No comments

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

Recent estimates are that about 6% of the US population suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. The condition typically results in a range of symptoms involving emotional instability, lack of empathy for others, and increased suicidality with about 10% of Borderlines suffering death by suicide.

On January 17, 2009, Dr. Harold Koenigsberg of Mount Sinai School of Medicine announced his team’s findings that functional MRI scans of adults diagnosed with BPD show they have significant and detectable differences in brain operation versus adults without BPD.

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Book Review: “An Umbrella for Alex” by Rachel Rashkin, MS

January 22nd, 2009 2 comments

Personality Disorder Awareness Network is now selling a children’s book entitled An Umbrella for Alex. It is the first book we’ve seen intended for children with a parent afflicted with Borderline Personality Disorder. The book is described as:

An Umbrella for Alex

An Umbrella for Alex

PDAN is proud to announce the publication of its first book, “An Umbrella for Alex,” by Rachel Rashkin, MS. It tells the story of how a young boy learns to understand and cope with his mother’s BPD illness.

Written to be read with a therapist or parent, the book reassures affected children that they did not cause and are mot responsible for a BPD parent’s volatile behavior.

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Support for Family Members of Those With BPD

January 18th, 2009 1 comment

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

If you’ve got a loved one or former loved one who has BPD, you’re likely to need a lot of emotional support to deal with the problems they present for you. Some may be lucky enough to have a relative with BPD who has gotten past the denial and is actively working on learning to improve behaviors. If you’re not so lucky, you may be in need of legal advice in family law, civil, and criminal arenas as Borderlines in pain and denial tend to lash out at their family or ex-family, as the case may be.

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Study Finds High Correlation of BPD, NPD, and Schizotypal Personality Disorder

January 17th, 2009 No comments

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

In a previous posting BPD prevalence may be 6%, 3 times higher than previously thought, we pointed out a study that estimates 5.9% of the US population suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. That study was based upon the Wave 2 National Epidemiologic Survey conducted in 2004 to 2005 using interviews of approximately 35,000 Americans. The study results were published in 2008.

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TIME Covers BPD but Omits the Full Story

January 17th, 2009 No comments

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

It was a welcome change to see mainstream media paying some serious attention to Borderline Personality Disorder for a change. This week, TIME has a major article (with a blurb on their cover!) about BPD. You can find it at The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder. They even mention the latest statistics showing about 18 million people in the US being afflicted with this mental illness. If you’ve been reading our site, you may have noticed our posting BPD prevalence may be 6%, 3 times higher than previously thought on the studies that came to these conclusions a few weeks ago.

For some reason, TIME left about 1.5 columns of the first page of the article just blank, with no text or pictures. And they mentioned very little about how Borderlines affect other people. Nothing is said about high-conflict divorces, distortion campaigns, child abuse, and passing along mental illness to their children via child abuse. That was a major disappointment. TIME only covered a small part of the full story of BPD by leaving that out.

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What is the Cost of BPD to Society?

January 11th, 2009 7 comments

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

I’d like to encourage people who are aware of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) to start spreading the news about how devastating this illness is not just for those who have it and their family members, but for the entire United States economy.

I wrote this post to explain to people who may not have the ability to understand how horrific BPD is from personal experience dealing with an afflicted person. Such people can still likely understand the economic impact of this illness and how it would be far more cost-effective for US mental health care policies to be overhauled to raise awareness and get most of the victims into treatment. The increased government spending appears that it would be entirely offset by savings in government expenses (in such areas of courts and law enforcement) and increases in tax revenues due to a significant improvement in worsened productivity harming families affected by BPD.


Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a devastating but very common mental illness that until recently has been believed based upon DSM-IV (Diagnostics and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition — a widely used reference book in the mental health field) to affect about 2% of the US population or about 6 million people in the US. Common belief is that it afflicts women about 3 times more often than men.

Recent research published in April 2008 suggests that 6% of the population may be affected and the difference between rates for males and females may be little. If this research is accurate, the United States with its population of about 300 million people has 18 million victims of BPD.

The result of BPD is a catastrophic cycle of child abuse and mental illness that runs for generations. The economic impact of this illness is worse than a 9/11/2001 terror attack each and every year. US mental health care policies are badly in need of an overhaul to deal with BPD and similar personality disorders and the drastic economic impact they have on any tens of millions of US citizens.

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BPD prevalence may be 6%, 3 times higher than previously thought

December 30th, 2008 No comments

(Click here for more coverage of Borderline Personality Disorder.)

DSM-IV (the “Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, 4th edition” — a reference book for those working in mental health care) estimates the prevalence of BPD is 2%, meaning that 2 out of every 100 people suffer from the disorder.  However, DSM-IV was published in 1994, a long time ago.  Since then, considerable research has shown the 2% rate may be a significant underestimate.

A telephone study in Iowa in the 1990s indicated that possibly 7% of the population suffers from BPD.

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BPD Distortion Campaigns

December 29th, 2008 97 comments

One of the classic behaviors of a person suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder is the vilification campaign. The target is the person against whom the perpetrator Borderline conducts the vilification.  The intent is to destroy the target’s reputation and thereby destroy the target’s relationships with family and friends, employers, co-workers, doctors, teachers, therapists, and others. The intent may even be to force the target to leave the community, put the target in prison, or even kill the target.  As with so many things involving Borderlines and their typical inability to understand or respect boundaries, there really are no limits. They will use basically any means available to them to cause damage to their target, including denigration, endless disparaging remarks, fabrication, false accusations, and even teaching others (including their children!) to lie on their behalf as part of their vilification campaign.

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