Treatment FAQ

what is the consensus on drug treatment of borderline personality disorder

by Aurelia Kihn Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago
image

Drug treatment should not be used routinely for borderline personality disorder or for the individual symptoms or behaviour intrinsically associated with the disorder; for example, repeated self-harm, marked emotional instability, risk-taking behaviour and transient psychotic symptoms.May 15, 2020

Medication

This review aimed to summarise the current evidence of drug treatment effects in BPD from high-quality randomised trials. Available studies tested the effects of antipsychotic, antidepressant and mood stabiliser treatment in BPD.

Therapy

The objective of this systematic review was to support the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in developing clinical practice guidelines on the appropriate use of pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments for patients with BPD.

Self-care

These findings are particularly important given that BPD is a disorder for which significant stigma may introduce barriers to successful treatment. The success of treatment dissemination depends in large part on whether clinicians are willing to use treatments and feel competent to do so. Structured Clinical Management (SCM)

What is the evidence for drug treatment effects in borderline personality disorder?

Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) abuse drugs or alcohol, which makes them vulnerable to developing an addiction. 1 People with BPD and a substance abuse disorder require a specialized dual diagnosis recovery program to treat both conditions.

Does the American Psychiatric Association have clinical practice guidelines for borderline personality disorder?

How successful is treatment dissemination for borderline personality disorder?

Can you have borderline personality disorder and substance abuse?

image

What is the most effective treatment for borderline personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder is mainly treated using psychotherapy, but medication may be added. Your doctor also may recommend hospitalization if your safety is at risk. Treatment can help you learn skills to manage and cope with your condition.

What is the success rate of BPD treatment?

Follow up studies of people with BPD receiving treatment found a borderline personality disorder treatment success rate of about 50% over a 10-year period. BPD takes time to improve, but treatment does work.

Is medication recommended for BPD?

Borderline personality disorder is often treated with anticonvulsants, antidepressants, or antipsychotics. There is no medication that is best for treating BPD.

What is the gold standard treatment for borderline personality disorder?

Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a “gold standard” treatment for emotion dysregulation and borderline personality disorder AND so much more…. can it be effective for you, too? You may have heard of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It is the treatment of choice for individuals that struggle with managing intense emotions.

Why do therapists refuse BPD treatment?

Fear of Patients Lashing Out. Individuals with symptoms of BPD are particularly sensitive to perceived criticism. This increases the likelihood that they will feel attacked when a therapist attempts to offer suggestions or insights. This often leads to lashing out.

Can BPD get better without treatment?

If you think you have BPD, don't let this misconception scare you away from therapy or make you feel helpless. Even without treatment, the symptoms of the disorder will ebb and flow over time; some people with BPD are able to function at a higher level than others, so recovery is different for each person.

What is the best mood stabilizer for borderline personality disorder?

Divalproex sodium and valproate Divalproex sodium is among the mood stabilizers, which are comprehensively studied in patients with BPD [52]. Wilcox claimed that divalproex decreased agitation significantly in patients with BPD.

What is the new name for borderline personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) Explains borderline personality disorder (BPD), also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), including possible causes and how you can access treatment and support.

Why do antidepressants not work for BPD?

Because antidepressants have not demonstrated significant high-level evidence of therapeutic benefit, these medications currently lack strong recommendations in treating BPD. Serotonin regulates amygdala hyperreactivity in BPD, thought to be a central neurobiological correlate of affective instability.

Can BPD be managed without medication?

Overcoming BPD without medication is possible, but you should always follow the guidance and treatment plan set forth by your doctor or health care provider. Medication isn't necessarily the primary treatment for BPD in most cases. It's typically only used to treat specific symptoms such as depression or mood swings.

Is DBT or CBT better for BPD?

For depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias and PTSD, research has shown that CBT tends to be the more effective treatment. For borderline personality disorder, self-harm behaviors and chronic suicidal ideation, DBT tends to be the better choice.

Is DBT The only treatment for BPD?

Although medications can provide adjunctive treatment in patients with BPD and comorbid psychiatric symptoms, DBT is currently the only empirically supported treatment for BPD.

What percentage of people recover from BPD?

Background. Recovery in borderline personality disorder (BPD) has predominantly been viewed in the context of symptom improvement and no longer meeting diagnostic criteria. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that symptom remission is a common occurrence, with remission rates ranging between 33 and 99% [1].

How long does BPD treatment take?

Most of the specialized treatments for BPD are time-limited and generally of 1 to 3 years' duration. This makes them expensive, and some experts suggest that a better model of care for patients with BPD would be intermittent psychotherapy.

Should people with BPD be hospitalized?

Some experts have even stated that patients with BPD should rarely or never be hospitalized because of the potential for deterioration in functioning, although concerns about iatrogenic effects are not supported by scientific evidence.

Why are drugs used for BPD?

Drugs are widely used in borderline personality disorder (BPD) treatment, chosen because of properties known from other psychiatric disorders ("off-label use"), mostly targeting affective or impulsive symptom clusters. To assess the effects of drug treatment in BPD patients.

What is the purpose of BPD assessment?

To assess the effects of drug treatment in BPD patients.

Is there a drug for borderline personality disorder?

Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) receive medical treatment. However, there are no drugs available for BPD treatment specifically. A certain drug is most often chosen because of its known properties in the treatment of associated disorders, or BPD symptoms that are also known to be present in other conditions, such as depressive, psychotic, or anxious disorders. BPD itself is characterised by a pervasive pattern of instability in affect regulation (with symptoms such as inappropriate anger, chronic feelings of emptiness, and affective instability), impulse control (symptoms: self-mutilating or suicidal behaviour, ideation, or suicidal threats to others), interpersonal problems (symptoms: frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, patterns of unstable relationships with idealization and depreciation of others), and cognitive-perceptual problems (symptoms: identity disturbance in terms of self perception, transient paranoid thoughts or feelings of dissociation in stressful situations). This review aimed to summarise the current evidence of drug treatment effects in BPD from high-quality randomised trials.

Do second generation antipsychotics have long term effects?

Moreover, the long-term use of these drugs has not been assessed. The small amount of available information for individual comparisons indicated marginal effects for first-generation antipsychotics and antidepressants.

Do mood stabilizers need replication?

The findings were suggestive in supporting the use of second-generation antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, and omega-3 fatty acids, but require replication, since most effect estimates were based on single studies. The long-term use of these drugs has not been assessed.

Does omega 3 fatty acid help with mood?

Available studies tested the effects of antipsychotic, antidepressant and mood stabiliser treatment in BPD. In addition, the dietary supplement omega-3 fatty acid (commonly derived from fish) which is supposed to have mood stabilising effects was tested. Twenty-eight studies covering 1742 study participants were included.

Can antidepressants help with BPD?

Antidepressants are not widely supported for BPD treatment, but may be helpful in the presence of comorbid conditions. Total BPD severity was not significantly influenced by any drug. No promising results are available for the core BPD symptoms of chronic feelings of emptiness, identity disturbance and abandonment.

What is borderline personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a debilitating psychiatric disorder, characterized by a long-term pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, distorted self-image, marked impulsivity, and affective instability. Individuals with BPD have significant functional impairment, high rates of comorbid mental disorders, substance use, deliberate self-harm, and suicidal ideation and behavior [1, 2]. By Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) definition, BPD has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, with enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate markedly from societal and cultural norms, and are stable and inflexible [3]. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) [4] refers to BPD as emotionally unstable personality disorderbut has similar diagnostic criteria to the DSM-5.

What is the first line of treatment for BPD?

Clinical practice guidelines recommend psychotherapies as first-line treatments for BPD [16–19], in particular, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a structured and manualized therapy.

How common is BPD in women?

The estimated prevalence of BPD in the general population in Western countries ranges between 0.4 and 3.9% [10]. Women are more frequently diagnosed with BPD than men, but it is unclear whether BPD is actually more common in women than men. In clinical psychiatric populations, the prevalence of BPD is high and estimated at 10% for outpatients and 15–25% for inpatients [11, 12]. Individuals with BPD are also frequent users of general primary care. The lifetime prevalence of BPD among primary care patients is about four times higher than in the general population [13]. Consequently, the societal costs of BPD are substantial; the annual direct healthcare costs and indirect costs in terms of lost productivity are >16 times higher among patients with BPD compared with matched controls without BPD [14].

What are the treatment classes for BPD?

As interventions, we included commonly used drug classes for the treatment of BPD, such as anticonvulsive medications, antidepressants, antipsychotic medications, benzodiazepines, melatonin, opioid agonists or antagonists, and sedative or hypnotic medications with a treatment duration of at least 8 weeks. Overall, these drug classes included 87 different pharmacotherapies. Outcomes of interest included severity of BPD, improvement of symptoms associated with BPD (e.g., aggression, anger, self-harm), general psychiatric symptoms, functioning, and adverse events. Supplementary Table 2 provides a detailed presentation of inclusion and exclusion criteria (see ESM).

When was the last systematic assessment of the efficacy and risk of harms of pharmacotherapy for the treatment?

The last systematic assessment of the efficacy and risk of harms of pharmacotherapy for the treatment of BPD was a Cochrane review in 2010 [29]. It concluded that second-generation antipsychotics and anticonvulsants have beneficial effects on individual symptoms of BPD, although the evidence was mostly based on single studies [29]. In 2017 and 2020, journal publications of focused updates of the Cochrane review did not formally assess the risk of bias of new studies and the certainty of the evidence [30, 31].

Is there a medication for BPD?

Currently, no medications have been approved by regulatory agencies for the treatment of BPD. Nevertheless, up to 96% of patients with BPD who seek treatment receive at least one psychotropic medication [20] and polypharmacy for BPD is common [21, 22]. Almost 19% of patients with BPD report four or more psychotropic medications [23]. Recommendations of clinical practice guidelines regarding pharmacotherapy vary. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom [24] and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council [25] recommend avoiding pharmacotherapies as first-line treatments except in acute crisis. Other professional societies or consensus statements view pharmacotherapies as adjunctive treatments, mainly to target symptoms of BPD, such as anger, aggression, and impulsiveness, or symptoms and comorbidities that are commonly associated with BPD, such as anxiety or depression [26–28]. Table ​Table11summarizes commonly used medication classes used to treat common symptoms associated with BPD.

Do antipsychotics reduce borderline personality disorder?

Second-generation antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, and antidepressants were not able to consistently reduce the severity of borderline personality disorder.

How many studies have been published on borderline personality disorder?

The Cochrane review of psychological therapies for borderline personality disorder, which analyzed 28 studies published until 2011, is among the most significant additions to the literature on treatments for BPD in the last 5 years [5]. The major randomized controlled studies can be characterized in four major waves (Table ​(Table1).1). The first wave of studies compared specialized therapies for BPD to TAU. In this first wave of studies, DBT and MBT were established as EBTs [1, 9–11]. Additionally, a short-term group therapy, STEPPS, was added to TAU and found to be more effective than TAU alone in reducing symptoms of BPD, negative mood states, and impulsivity while increasing functioning [4].

What is evidence based treatment for BPD?

Evidence-based advances in the treatment of BPD include a delineation of generalist models of care in contrast to specialist treatments, identification of essential effective elements of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and the adaptation of DBT treatment to manage post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and BPD. Studies on pharmacological interventions remain limited and have not provided evidence that any specific medications can provide stand-alone treatment.

What is mentalization in BPD?

Mentalization refers to the complex capacity human beings develop to imagine the thoughts and feelings in one’s own and other’s minds to understand interpersonal interactions [41]. Therein lies its mechanism of change. MBT proposes that BPD symptoms arise when a patient stops mentalizing, leading patients to operate from pathologically certainty about other’s motives, the disconnection from grounding influence of reality, and a desperate need for proof of feelings through action. Attachment interactions become hyperactivated, feeding into distress and difficulty coping, rather than providing safety and security, rendering the therapeutic process with BPD difficult.

What is SCM in BPD?

Like GPM, SCM provides a structured framework for approaching treatment for BPD (see Table ​Table22for comparisons). This framework is guided by a number of generalist principles and is meant to make treatment understandable and predictable for patients. There is an emphasis on sharing the borderline diagnosis with patients, psychoeducation, alliance building that is based both on contractual (e.g., goal agreement) and relational factors (e.g., trust, reliability, liking), encouragement of family involvement, limited reliance on psychopharmacological intervention, some guidance on managing co-morbid conditions, and explicit safety planning. Both GPM and SCM recommend intersession contact be used sparingly. However, SCM takes a more cautious approach, advocating for “vigorously supporting the patient on the telephone if necessary” [47, p. 69], vehemently pursuing clients who have not come to treatment, and a willingness to meet them at home or elsewhere when safety risk is elevated. This may have more to do with differences in the legal climate of the UK versus the USA than with beliefs about the utility of intersession contact. Also, SCM includes specifically articulated weekly group therapy. Group therapy is open on a rolling basis for patients and includes psychoeducation and a framework focused on problem solving.

How does MBT help with BPD?

MBT aims to stabilize the problems of BPD by strengthening the patient’s capacity to mentalize under the stress of attachment activation [41]. MBT therapists adopt a stance of curiosity, and “not knowing” in order to encourage patients to assess their emotional and interpersonal situation through a more grounded, flexible, and benevolent lens. Prioritizing the maintenance of mentalizing, MBT therapists support patients to think through hyperactivated states themselves, rather than providing prepackaged or intellectualized explanations, insights, or skills. Outpatient MBT involves 50 min of weekly individual therapy, 75 min of group therapy, and a reflecting team meeting which serves to support clinical team members in their mentalization in the process of treatment [25]. Developed within the National Health Services (NHS) in the United Kingdom, MBT provides a tenable model for treating personality disordered patients settings where patients and clinicians face scarce resources.

What is the best EBT for BPD?

The most well-known, well researched, and widely available EBT for BPD is DBT [39, 40]. Informed by clinical experience with suicidal personality disordered patients who did not improve with standard cognitive behavioral therapy intervention, Linehan developed DBT by incorporating the concept of dialectics and the strategy of validation into a treatment focused on skills acquisition and behavioral shaping. DBT formulates the problems of BPD as a result of the transaction between individuals born with high emotional sensitivity and “invalidating environments” that is, people or systems (i.e., families, schools, treatment settings, workplaces) that cannot perceive, understand, and respond effectively to their vulnerabilities.

What are the co-morbidities of BPD?

Investigators have also adapted the established evidence based treatments for BPD to manage the usual complex co-morbidities of BPD including substance use disorders substance use disorders (SUDs) [32], eating disorders (EDs) [33], and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [34]. BPD patients who present with acutely symptomatic co-morbidities of these types are often challenging to manage with strictly BPD oriented treatments [35]. Conversely, in SUD and ED treatments, individuals with co-morbid BPD may also present with problems that are difficult to manage in those treatment environments. Efforts to target BPD with its co-morbid disorders simultaneously have been developed and studies of their feasibility and effectiveness have been published in the last 5 years [15•, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38].

Why is it important to get treatment for borderline personality disorder?

Treatment can help you learn skills to manage and cope with your condition. It's also necessary to get treated for any other mental health disorders that often occur along with borderline personality disorder, such as depression or substance misuse.

What medications are used for borderline personality disorder?

Medications may include antidepressants, antipsychotics or mood-stabilizing drugs.

How to reduce impulsiveness?

Reduce your impulsiveness by helping you observe feelings rather than acting on them. Work on improving relationships by being aware of your feelings and those of others. Learn about borderline personality disorder. Types of psychotherapy that have been found to be effective include: Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

What is a DBT?

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT includes group and individual therapy designed specifically to treat borderline personality disorder. DBT uses a skills-based approach to teach you how to manage your emotions, tolerate distress and improve relationships.

What is transference focused psychotherapy?

Also called psychodynamic psychotherapy, TFP aims to help you understand your emotions and interpersonal difficulties through the developing relationship between you and your therapist. You then apply these insights to ongoing situations.

How to share information with a mental health provider?

Take a family member or friend along, if possible. Someone who has known you for a long time may be able to share important information with the doctor or mental health provider, with your permission.

What is a good psychiatric management approach?

Good psychiatric management. This treatment approach relies on case management, anchoring treatment in an expectation of work or school participation. It focuses on making sense of emotionally difficult moments by considering the interpersonal context for feelings. It may integrate medications, groups, family education and individual therapy.

What is a BPD?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior.

Does a drug have multiple schedules?

The drug has multiple schedules. The schedule may depend on the exact dosage form or strength of the medication.

Is abuse a low potential for abuse relative to those in Schedule 4?

Has a low potential for abuse relative to those in schedule 4. Has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. Abuse may lead to limited physical dependence or psychological dependence relative to those in schedule 4.

How does borderline personality disorder affect substance abuse?

People with borderline personality disorder engage in impulsive and risky behaviors, including substance abuse. This population commonly suffers from a co-morbid addiction to drugs or alcohol, 2 and the risk of suicide increases for those who have a dual diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and a substance addiction. 1 People with these co-occurring mental health conditions should seek out a dual diagnosis treatment center that has experience treating borderline personality disorder and addiction. The treatment plan will need to be comprehensive to address the unique needs of each person and decrease the risk of relapse.

How many people have borderline personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder affects about 2% of people in the general population.

What are the factors that influence borderline personality disorder?

A few environmental factors that may influence the development of borderline personality disorder are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Childhood physical, sexual or verbal abuse. Being a part of a community of unstable family relationships. Loss of or separation from a parent in childhood. Childhood neglect.

What is the treatment for addiction?

Detoxification. You will be weaned off the substance you’re addicted to, given medication if necessary, and provided with medical and comfort care. Medical maintenance. Medication may be prescribed to treat the addiction or to alleviate mental health symptoms such as depression or anxiety.

What is the best therapy for a person who is a destructive person?

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): This form of therapy is centered on mindfulness. The therapist will teach you ways to regulate emotions, decrease destructive behaviors and improve interpersonal relationships.

Should dual diagnosis be treated at the same time?

Both conditions should be treated simultaneously at a dual diagnosis recovery center so that you can decrease your risk of relapse and increase pro-social and positive behaviors. If the co-occurring disorders go untreated, you run the risk of: 1

Can borderline personality disorder be a dual diagnosis?

As mentioned above, many people who suffer from borderline personality disorder also have a substance abuse disorder, which is referred to as a dual diagnosis. The two conditions may influence and perpetuate each other.

image
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9