Medication

The mental health profession often prescribes medications to patients that have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. There are no medicines that have been shown to markedly improve BPD itself. However, BPD rarely occurs alone. Most often, it occurs clustered with other problems, primarily other personality disorders such as NPD.

People who have BPD traits often have depression. They may also suffer from other non-related disorders like bipolar disorder or other disorders that can be treated to some extent with medications.

There are medications that help with depression and mood swings. Most often the cause of these in someone with BPD is the disorder itself. Thus BPD is the cause and depression the effect.

Treating BPD with medication is a lot like treating a cold. You can’t really treat a cold, but you can minimize some of the symptoms with medication.

If you hold out hope that medication can successfully be used to treat the core BPD traits themselves, then you will most likely be disappointed. If medication is used to treat side effects of the disorder, then some improvement may be noticed.

It is important to note that this is not the only viewpoint held. There are doctors who believe that BPD can be treated effectively with a combination of medication and therapy. While this is a complex and controversial topic, I would just note that doctors make a lot of money holding out hope. If a doctor were to say, "BP is not treatable with medical means" then they would have a hard time getting you to pay them to treat it. This is simple logic.

For specifics information on what medications are being used for low functioning BPs, get "Lost in the Mirror" the second edition. The second edition added lots of information on the newest medications that are being used in conjunction with this disorder. High functioning borderlines frequently benefit from anti-depressants, but often are in too much denial to take medication that is associated with a more serious problem. Some of the drugs have side effects as well.

BPD411 Home - Services - Resources - Partners - Contact Us - Mailing List

Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.