Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), belongs to Cluster B of the personality disorders, which can be seen as dramatic, emotional, and erratic behaviors.  According to the most current DSM there are nine ways to tell if someone is suffering from BPD (a minimum of five being required to have the diagnosis):

(a) frantic efforts to avoid abandonment; (b) a history of unstable and intense relationships with others; (c) identity disturbance; (d) impulsivity in at least two functional areas such as spending, sex, substance use, eating, or driving; (e) recurrent suicidal threats or behaviors as well as self mutilation; (f) affective instability with marked reactivity of mood; (g) chronic feelings of emptiness; (h) inappropriate and intense anger or difficulty controlling anger; and (i) transient stress-induced paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. (Wiederman and Sansone 277)

            One thing that caught my eye while looking at this disorder was the third way to see if someone is suffering from BPD, which is “identity disturbance.”  I began to ask myself, “What exactly is meant by ‘identity disturbance’ and can it be used to be a deciding factor in whether someone has BPD or not?”  Well I began to look deeper and found an article by Michael W. Wiederman and Randy A. Sansone.  Within the article it stated that more than 20 years ago, researchers found a high rate of homosexuality within the diagnosis of BPD.  Knowing that most disorders are comorbid, or have another disorder accompanying them, I put two and two together and realized that by “identity disturbance” they were directly involving homosexuality as a determining factor in BPD.  I just imagined psychologists or psychiatrists asking patients whether or not they were gay or lesbian and then checking that requirement off the checklist, making it that much more easy for homosexuals to be considered disordered. 

Another fact that is thrown at readers is that “at some point” over a 10-year study period, one third of either the men or women in that study reported having engaged in some sort of a homosexual relationship, thus checking them off the list again.  According to Robert O. Friedal, the age of onset for BPD is usually in the teenage years or early twenties, a.k.a the end of high school/early college years.  Now I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I’m pretty sure many teenagers are just starting to figure themselves out at that age and will most certainly do some experimenting.  To have been in that study and said “yes, I did have sexual relations that would be considered homosexual at some point through the past ten years, but it doesn’t define my sexuality,” I doubt they would have been listened to and would have just been considered to have had that disorder because it’s just another check mark on a list which should not relate to sexuality in the first place.  Although this study focuses more so on homosexuality, I couldn’t help but think about how Gender Identity Disorder (GID) can also play into this.  I mean, one of the criteria is “identity disturbance” and people who do consider themselves another gender, or no gender at all, will most certainly be the first people to be diagnosed with this disorder for displaying that certain criteria.

            Being homosexual or having GID is definitely not the end-all be-all determining factor in BPD, in fact sexuality in general is a big part of it.  If you look back at the criteria for diagnosing BPD one of the criteria listed is “unstable and intense relationships with others.”  Another criteria is “impulsivity in at least two functional areas such as spending, sex, substance abuse, eating, or driving.”  Within the article that I read, BPD usually stems from childhood abuse, most of it being sexual.  Knowing that cycles often repeat when experiencing abuse it can only be assumed that those sexually abused children will one day become promiscuous (as seen in cases of BPD) or the sexual abusers themselves. 

It is also suggested that unstable and abusive relationships at such a young age can cause poor attachment systems between the parent and child which can later result in poor ways of handling adult relationships or even post-traumatic anxiety in dealing with sexual relationships.  This can lead to either sexual avoidance or promiscuity with partners barely known.  It was also said in the article that sexual promiscuity was mostly seen in heterosexual women as well as gay men as they may have an easier time finding men interested in casual, no strings attached sex.  The article then connected this to “impulsivity and a relatively unstable sense of personal identity being an explanation for the higher rates of homosexual behavior in individuals with BPD.”  It’s funny that they relate “unstable sense of personal identity” and homosexual behavior since homosexuality has been out of the DSM for quite some time now.  It just shows that some people are still under the impression that homosexuality is dysfunctional and an abnormal way to live.
Another point made in this article was that way more women than men are diagnosed with this disorder.  Because it talks about sexual promiscuity being one of the main traits of this disorder, it's easy to recognize that it is still viewed as way more "abnormal" for women to be sexually promiscuous than men.  Because men have the stigma that they should be sexual beings, I assume that they are less likely than women to fit the criteria for this disorder.  According to Wiederman and Sansone, BPD manifests itself differently in each sex.  Women display it more in a histrionic fashion (self-harming, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress, etc.) while men display more antisocial features (fighting, reckless behavior, substance abuse, etc.  This being said along with the fact that it is abnormal for women to be sexually promiscuous, BPD sounds much more similar to the way women display it rather than how men display it resulting in men being diagnosed/misdiagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.  The way society views women and men can have a huge impact on the way they are perceived even when dealing with a diagnosis of a mental disorder.

-Emily

Recources:

Michael W. Wiederman, and Randy A. Sansone. "Borderline Personality Disorder and Sexuality." The Family Journal. July 2009. Web. 25 April 2012

Robert O. Friedel. "Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: Knowledge is the edge." 2012. Web. 25 April 2012. http://www.bpddemystified.com/index.asp?id=2