Borderline personality: a primary care context

Abstract

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD) IS A COMPLEX AXIS II Phenomenon that is typically described in a psychological or psychiatric context. In this article, we translate the various aspects of BPD to the primary care setting. Previous work in this area has explored specific relationships between BPD and individual medical disorders or between BPD and general somatic symptoms, but the synthesis of these findings and their augmentation with cogent psychological theory is new to the field. Specifically, we highlight the prevalence rate of BPD in the primary care setting, the effects on healthcare utilization, the themes of somatic preoccupation and somatization disorder, several medical syndromes that illustrate the dynamics of the disorder in the medical setting, and the relationship of BPD to disability. We believe that the BPD concept needs to extend beyond its traditional psychological/psychiatric borders to include the subset of BPD patients with somatic symptoms who are seen in primary care settings.