Glossary

The words you may hear from a doctor, therapist, or pharmacist, with a short, clear explanation of each and a trusted source behind every section.

Diagnosis and symptoms

Words you may hear when a clinician talks about borderline personality disorder. National Institute of Mental Health · Borderline personality disorder (brochure)

Borderline personality disorder (BPD): A serious mental illness that affects how a person feels about themselves and others and makes it hard to function in everyday life, often involving difficulty regulating emotions, impulsivity, an unstable sense of self, and troubled relationships.
Personality disorder: A lasting pattern of inner experience and behavior that differs markedly from what a person's culture expects, tends to be fixed across situations, and causes distress or problems in daily life.; National Institute of Mental Health · Personality disorders statistics
Emotional dysregulation: Difficulty regulating emotions. It is a core part of borderline personality disorder, and learning to cope with it in therapy is often the key to long-term improvement.; National Alliance on Mental Illness · Borderline personality disorder
Splitting: Seeing people in extremes, so relationships swing between idealizing someone and devaluing them.; National Alliance on Mental Illness · Borderline personality disorder
Fear of abandonment: Intense worry about being left, which can lead to frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Chronic emptiness: Long-lasting feelings of emptiness, one of the common symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
Dissociation: Feeling cut off from oneself, watching oneself from outside the body, or feeling disconnected from one's surroundings.
Self-harm: Hurting oneself on purpose, such as by cutting. People with borderline personality disorder have a much higher rate of self-harm than the general population.
Co-occurring condition: Another mental or physical condition a person has at the same time, such as depression, anxiety, or a substance use disorder. Co-occurring conditions are common with borderline personality disorder.
Screening questionnaire: A short set of questions that flags who may need a fuller assessment. A screening score is not a diagnosis.; Journal of Personality Disorders (2003) · A screening measure for borderline personality disorder: the McLean Screening Instrument (PubMed record)
Remission: A period when symptoms have eased enough that the disorder is no longer active. Borderline personality disorder can remit, and symptoms can be reduced and managed.; American Psychiatric Association · Updated borderline personality disorder practice guideline (news release, Dec 10, 2024)

Therapy and support

Names of the therapies and supports described on the Treatments page. American Psychiatric Association · Practice guideline for the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder

Psychotherapy (talk therapy): Treatments that help a person identify and change troubling emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, one-on-one or in a group. It is the primary treatment for borderline personality disorder.; National Institute of Mental Health · Psychotherapies
Structured psychotherapy: A therapy with a defined approach and research support that targets the core features of borderline personality disorder. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recommends this kind of therapy.; American Psychiatric Association · Updated borderline personality disorder practice guideline (news release, Dec 10, 2024)
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): A therapy developed specifically for borderline personality disorder that uses mindfulness and teaches skills to manage intense emotions, reduce self-destructive behavior, and improve relationships.; National Institute of Mental Health · Borderline personality disorder (brochure)
Mindfulness: Awareness of your present situation and emotional state. It is a core part of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).; National Institute of Mental Health · Borderline personality disorder (brochure)
Mentalization-based treatment (MBT): A therapy that builds mentalizing, the ability to reflect on your own thoughts and feelings and those of others, especially under stress.
Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP): A psychodynamic therapy that uses the relationship with the therapist to understand intense emotions and all-good or all-bad views of oneself and others.
Schema therapy: Also called schema-focused therapy. It works with deep patterns of seeing oneself and others that grow out of early experiences.
Good psychiatric management (GPM): A practical, case-management style approach that includes education about borderline personality disorder and focuses on work and social life.
Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS): A 20-week skills group that teaches about borderline personality disorder and skills for managing emotions and behavior, added to other treatment.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): A therapy that helps people identify and change core beliefs and behaviors that come from inaccurate views of themselves and others.; National Institute of Mental Health · Borderline personality disorder (brochure)
Crisis plan: A written plan that names likely triggers, self-help strategies that work for you, and how to reach services when those are not enough.; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence · Borderline personality disorder: recognition and management (CG78) recommendations
Usual treatment: The care people would normally get, used as a comparison in studies of a new treatment. Also called treatment as usual.; Cochrane review (2020) · Psychological therapies for people with borderline personality disorder (PubMed record)

Medicines and evidence

Words used on the Treatments and Medicines pages. National Institute of Mental Health · Mental health medications

FDA approved: Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a specific use. Medicines go through this process; psychotherapies have no formal approval process. No medicine is FDA approved for borderline personality disorder.; National Institute of Mental Health · Psychotherapies
Off-label use: Prescribing a medicine for a purpose it is not approved for. Medicines used for borderline personality disorder are used off-label.; Cochrane review (2022) · Pharmacological interventions for people with borderline personality disorder (PubMed record)
Antidepressant: A medicine used to treat depression. Providers sometimes prescribe antidepressants for other conditions, such as anxiety.
Antipsychotic: A medicine typically used to treat psychosis, a condition that involves some loss of contact with reality.
Mood stabilizer: A medicine typically used to treat bipolar disorder and mood changes linked to other mental disorders.
Taper: Lowering a medicine dose slowly and safely with a provider's help, to give the body time to adjust.
Placebo: An inactive pill or treatment used in trials for comparison, so researchers can tell whether the real treatment does more.; Cochrane review (2022) · Pharmacological interventions for people with borderline personality disorder (PubMed record)
Randomized controlled trial: A study in which people are assigned by chance to different treatments, so the groups can be compared fairly. Cochrane reviews of borderline personality disorder treatment pool these trials.; Cochrane review (2022) · Pharmacological interventions for people with borderline personality disorder (PubMed record)
Cochrane review: A systematic review that gathers and analyzes all the trials on a question. It also rates how certain the evidence is: low or very low certainty means future research could change the result.; Cochrane review (2022) · Pharmacological interventions for people with borderline personality disorder (PubMed record)
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE): The public body in England that publishes clinical guidelines, including a guideline on recognizing and managing borderline personality disorder.; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence · Borderline personality disorder: recognition and management (CG78) recommendations