Borderline Personality Disorder?

[ScienceGeek]

I've had psychiatrists try and pin this one down on me before a few times and I've wondered if it is a common thing to happen that people with an undiagnosed ASD have had psychs try and diagnose them with BPD?

[bid]

Oh yes!

 

Bid

[ogsplosh]

yes it happened to my husband once you have a BPD label its hard to shake and you often get labelled as being uncooperative

[warrenpenalver]

If the doctors actually bothered to read the diagnostic criteria for BPD (or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (borderline type) if they bothered to read the latest ICD-10) then it is dead easy to rule out BPD in most cases of AS. BPD seems an easy quick solution for Doctors who are lazy.

[Tally]

It's a label too often slapped onto anyone who has ever self-harmed. Failure to recover with treatment can be seen as a sign that you are sabotaging your recovery. It is an issue in many conditions other than ASD, but if you behave at all unusually, it can be misinterpreted as a sign of non-co-operation.

[Shnoing]

Hey, look here:

Disorders of adult personality and behaviour

(F60-F69)

 

This block includes a variety of conditions and behaviour patterns of clinical significance which tend to be persistent and appear to be the expression of the individual's characteristic lifestyle and mode of relating to himself or herself and others. Some of these conditions and patterns of behaviour emerge early in the course of individual development, as a result of both constitutional factors and social experience, while others are acquired later in life. Specific personality disorders (F60.-), mixed and other personality disorders (F61.-), and enduring personality changes (F62.-) are deeply ingrained and enduring behaviour patterns, manifesting as inflexible responses to a broad range of personal and social situations. They represent extreme or significant deviations from the way in which the average individual in a given culture perceives, thinks, feels and, particularly, relates to others. Such behaviour patterns tend to be stable and to encompass multiple domains of behaviour and psychological functioning. They are frequently, but not always, associated with various degrees of subjective distress and problems of social performance.

 

 

F60 Specific personality disorders

These are severe disturbances in the personality and behavioural tendencies of the individual; not directly resulting from disease, damage, or other insult to the brain, or from another psychiatric disorder; usually involving several areas of the personality; nearly always associated with considerable personal distress and social disruption; and usually manifest since childhood or adolescence and continuing throughout adulthood.

...

F60.3 Emotionally unstable personality disorder

Personality disorder characterized by a definite tendency to act impulsively and without consideration of the consequences; the mood is unpredictable and capricious. There is a liability to outbursts of emotion and an incapacity to control the behavioural explosions. There is a tendency to quarrelsome behaviour and to conflicts with others, especially when impulsive acts are thwarted or censored. Two types may be distinguished: the impulsive type, characterized predominantly by emotional instability and lack of impulse control, and the borderline type, characterized in addition by disturbances in self-image, aims, and internal preferences, by chronic feelings of emptiness, by intense and unstable interpersonal relationships, and by a tendency to self-destructive behaviour, including suicide gestures and attempts.

Personality (disorder):

� aggressive

� borderline

� explosive

(Italics mine)

As warrenpenalver already wrote, psychs who dx a Specific personality disorder on top of AS haven't read the manuals. The most important point, as far as I understand it, is whether the symptoms were there already in the childhood 'Disorders of psychological development':

Disorders of psychological development (F80-F89)

 

The disorders included in this block have in common: (a) onset invariably during infancy or childhood; (b.) impairment or delay in development of functions that are strongly related to biological maturation of the central nervous system; and (c.) a steady course without remissions and relapses.

. Edited May 22, 2008 by Shnoing

[ScienceGeek]

For me it was while I was seeing a psychiatrist for a referral to a certain gender clinic in London that this came up, about 3 years ago. Commented on things like lack of eye contact, speech problems (I was having a hard time, living in a new city where I didn't know anybody, difficult journey and all so words just weren't coming that day), inappropriately dressed. Refusal of antidepressants (they don't work and I wasn't depressed). Their report concluding gender identity disorder and possible borderline personality disorder. All the psychiatrists I have seen they all want to point out the lack of eye contact thing.

[Shnoing]

Well, if you wanted a referral to a certain gender clinic the psych had to dx a gender identity disorder just to get you there, I think. Gender identity disorders (F64) are very near borderline (F60) [i'm referring to the position in the ICD-10 manual, of course!] so I think that just sprang to their minds (as opposed to F84.5).

Edited May 22, 2008 by Shnoing