Posted by noa on March 8, 2003, at 11:07:41
In reply to Re: Bordeline Personality Disorder » sjb, posted by KrissyP on March 7, 2003, at 23:21:58
SJB,
I think BPD is quite unspecific. It describes a pattern of functioning over a long period of time, usually implying that problems are at least in part caused by early experiences, but doesn't really help specify to what degree a person would have problems with different symptoms that fall under the dx.
In any event, when deciding on medications, it is the specific symptoms, and not a catch-all dx like BPD, that will determine which meds could help. This is true even of dxes that are more specific than BPD (major depression can look differnt in different people, for example).
Nowadays, the BPD dx is somewhat controversial. Some researchers (Akiskal for one) seem to think that BPD is used to describe women who have hard to diagnose rapid cycling forms of depression-hypomania. Some think it is a mix of anxiety/panic and depression.
I think BPD is useful only as long as it's useful (same is true for any diagnosis, actually). I know that this statement sounds like circular logic, but it isn't. If thinking of your combo of symptoms and personal problems as BPD helps you to understand how you developed some coping patterns that are not healthy, so you can begin to figure out how to change them, then it is useful. But to determine medications, I don't see it is very useful. And I am wary of how it is used by some therapists/pdocs, ie, those that hold to closely too the traditional (psychoanalytic) thinking about this dx, without looking at other aspects of it, including the possibility that specific symptoms are biological and can be treated with meds.
poster:noa
thread:206795
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030306/msgs/207122.html