Borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD — one condition with two names?
Researchers have failed to agree on whether they are distinct conditions or different ways of conceptualising the same underlying difficulties.
Borderline personality disorder is one of psychiatry’s most contested and stigmatised diagnoses.
For a long time, psychiatrists have been split over replacing it with complex PTSD (cPTSD).
The two share many symptoms, but researchers have failed to agree on whether they are distinct conditions, or different ways of conceptualising the same underlying difficulties.
Their origins are different. Borderline personality disorder (BPD), characterised by instability in self-image, relationships, emotions and behaviour, originated from psychoanalysis and has been in the DSM since the 1980s.
