Bipolar is to Borderline Personality Disorder as...

My first wife is to my second wife is to my thir…

Unfortunately, Bi-Polar is the flavor of the week so people with BPD are quite likely to be diagnosed as bi-polar. Also, from what I was reading about it, BPD isn’t very well known by psychologists/psychiatrists. Granted, that info may be a bit dated.

@mrentropy It may depend on the psychologist/psychiatrist, but I’ve found most are at least moderately up on it.

@mrentropy There are few psychologist who actually do the recommended therapy for BPD (dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). They have to have special training for it. I have seen the same patient diagnosed with BPD by a young psychiatrist and schizophrenic by an older one TWICE. They are similar but certainly not the same. There is very good information about the disease (BPD) as well as finding an appropriate therapist on BPDcentral.com.

A. Green to purple.

Bi-polar can be very bad, yes, but my guardian had/has BPD and living with that was much, much worse. It really was like walking on eggshells to be around her 99% of the time. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her and my uncle who has it, Christ. She was diagnosed years after I moved out, unfortunately, as the concept of BPD was very, very new in my youth.

At least with bi-polar disorder, which one of my uni roommates had, you could tell when something was going in one direction or the other, the general mood was sustained for more than a few days, and you could see the pendulum come back around. Plus, she could and did get meds for it in those days.

Bipolar is to Borderline Personality Disorder as…

Lithium is to electro-shock therapy!

Bipolar is to Borderline Personality Disorder as apples are to oranges. They’re not the same thing.

@hawaii_jake So then A or B?

@Ben_Dover Electric shock isn’t used for BPD. The antipsychotics are used along with therapy.

A

@papayalily I’m really glad to hear that.
@perspicacious I was (or still am, probably) a member of BPDCentral. I found it extremely helpful when I needed it.

English ivy is to kudzu

@anartist Ok, now try for an analogy I might understand.

I would say other. At least according to the DSM-IV and thus according to current thinking in the field, Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder; Borderline Personality Disorder is a personality disorder. Two different things. For that reason, among others, they are not really comparable. And your point is?

@lillycoyote My point? I talked with a psychologist and a psychiatrist this week and was shocked, shocked! to learn that they both consider it to be much more like teal vs aqua and think that many who are diagnosed as bipolar really have bpd, overdiagnosis issues aside.

@papayalily Well, it’s certainly a complicated issue. Humans like to categorize and create taxonomies when in reality there is much more overlap and much more fluidity and less clarity (not sure how to put it) than their little lists and indexes and categories and taxonomies have room or nuance for; the lines are not drawn so sharply in nature and in the human mind as they are in the DSM-IV.

Bipolar is a pathology that can be treated. It is an illness. Borderline refers to someone’s innate personality. It is part of what makes that person tick.