Borderline personality disorder is a psychiatric disorder that includes problems with intense mood instability, severe difficulties in interpersonal relationships, problems with behavioral control, including suicidal behaviors, and often a disrupted cognitive process during periods of high stress.

What are the symptoms of borderline personality disorder?
• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
characterized by alternating extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance
• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
• Affective instability due to marked reactivity or mood
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
• Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

How prevalent is borderline personality disorder?
The diagnosis is increasing in numbers. More than 11% of all outpatients and 20% of all inpatients in treatment meet criteria for borderline personality disorder.

Why does the disorder develop?
While there are several theories on the development of the disorder, there is yet no definitive answer. However, there is a consensus that the disorder develops because of a constellation of factors. These include a variety of inherited or acquired vulnerabilities in conjunction with a range of environmental stressors.

Treatment for borderline personality disorder:
In spite of the severity of the disorder, effective treatments are available. These include:
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy
• Transference Focused Therapy
• Supportive Therapy

Borderline personality treatment programs at Weill Cornell Westchester:
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy Day Treatment Program
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy College Program
• Supportive Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• Transference Focused Therapy
• Group Psychotherapy
• Concomitant medication management as needed

Contact Information
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Perry D. Hoffman, Ph.D.
(914) 997-8628