Friday Factoid: Stability When Unstable: Borderline Personality Disorder May Have Elements that Change Over Time

Borderline Personality Disorder is generally perceived as an unchanging condition which has very little ebb and flow to its course. However, longitudinal data presents a different perspective when looked over a 10-year time span. The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study conducted research on at least 668 patients administering 5 semi-structured interviews over the course of a decade (Conway, Hopwood, Morey, & Skodol, 2018). Through analyzing these interviews, it was determined that about 45% of the individual differences in the disorder’s severity is determined by stable elements. Of these stable elements, they were associated with personality traits such as neuroticism and environmental factors such as childhood abuse. As for the time-varying elements, these factors wax and wane depending on other factors, such as substance abuse. Overall, the study shows that there are varying elements to a condition that otherwise is thought of as a trait based and stable condition.

References
Conway, C. C., Hopwood, C. J., Morey, L. C., & Skodol, A. E.  (2018). Borderline personality disorder is equally trait-like and state-like over ten years in adult psychiatric patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 127 (6), 590-601.

Andrew Goebel, MS, LPA (Temp)
WKPIC Doctoral Intern