Borderline Personality Disorder

The Biology of Borderline (and a Diagnostic Tip)

The importance of gathering sufficient information for diagnosis is particularly important for borderline personality disorder (BPD), which encompasses multiple symptoms that overlap across many diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), making its identification challenging.

The Biology of Borderline (and a Diagnostic Tip)
Derick E. Vergne, MD
March 23, 2015

Diagnosis in psychiatry continues to be based on observation. However, economic forces are driving the norm of inaccurate diagnoses after an initial interview lasting less than an hour. To that extent clinicians are taught to rely heavily on the history documented in a patient’s medical chart, the diagnostic information found in all records is the result of the same short interview, followed by even shorter follow-up visits. When external influences curtail information-gathering rather than allowing sufficient time for diagnosis, the information will often be incomplete and potentially inaccurate. Apparently this is more complicated than setting a diagnosis for other medical conditions. Physical pain can be sometimes easily treated, you just need to have the right diagnosis. Learn more here about concierge medical service in Scottsdale, if you struggle to find a professional family doctor. As for emotional disturbance, it is more difficult to diagnose, although it can influence your life for a long time and even cause some other illnesses.

Psychiatrists are best served by a keen understanding of the natural history of disease and its many facets, coupled with thorough observation of behavior (ie, mental status), to arrive at an accurate diagnosis. More than 100 years ago, Kraepelin and colleagues[1] taught us to use proper observation as a guiding light in diagnosis:

…after the first thorough examination of a new patient, each of us had to throw in a note [in a “diagnosis box”] with his diagnosis written on it. After a while, the notes were taken out of the box, the diagnoses were listed, and the case was closed, the final interpretation of the disease was added to the original diagnosis. In this way, we were able to see what kind of mistakes had been made and were able to follow-up the reasons for the wrong original diagnosis.

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