An Opioid Deficit in Borderline Personality Disorder: Self-Cutting, Substance Abuse, and Social Dysfunction

Excerpt:

How might abnormal opioid activity help to explain the symptoms and etiology of borderline personality disorder? For decades, researchers have theorized that at least one behavior common in borderline personality disorder—self-cutting—relates to abnormalities in opioid activity. It has long been noted that patients with borderline personality disorder report that they engage in self-cutting not as a suicidal act but, rather, as a means to relieve psychic pain. Many patients report that they do not feel physical pain at the moment when they cut themselves; instead, cutting engenders feelings of relief or well-being. One view of cutting in borderline personality disorder is that it represents a method of endogenous opioid generation. In this view, patients learn to cut themselves, thereby releasing opioids, which reward their behavior. This, coupled with evidence that patients with borderline personality disorder who do not cut themselves are less symptomatic than those who do, led to efforts to treat borderline personality disorder with opiate antagonists by eliminating the positive feedback from cutting. While we know of no large-scale randomized, controlled trial, pilot studies on the efficacy of opiate antagonists showed mixed results (reviewed in reference 4) and overall showed that while opiate antagonists may slightly decrease cutting behavior, they do not improve the intrapsychic distress that leads to the cutting (6). This lack of diminished distress is consistent with the model of opioid deficiency.

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BON Note: This line of research is very interesting and could lead to medications to address opiod deficiencies in BPD.