eli5: What are the differences between Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorders?
In: Biology
Bipolar Disorder is a mood disorder characterized by the display of periods of depression and mania/hypomania.
Both depression and mania can be life threatening. Extreme depression can lead to suicide attempts and mania can lead to life-threatening behaviour such as holding a delusional belief that one can fly. Mania can be accompanied by psychosis whereas the less severe Hypomania usually is not.
Bipolar Disorder has 3-4 different classifications depending on the presentation of symptoms. Treatment is a combination of medication and therapy.
Periods of depression and mania/hypomania are usually temporal rather than trigger based.
Outside of periods of depression or mania/hypomania, individuals with BiPolar disorder are otherwise neurotypical.
Borderline Personality Disorder is a personality disorder, it’s a collection of deeply ingrained, inflexible, and incredibly maladaptive core beliefs, thought processes, behaviors, and coping mechanisms.
Individuals with BPD have an incredibly hard time handling emotions, especially negative ones. Feelings of sadness, abandonment, loss, disappointment, and anger can be overwhelming. This often leads to self destructive behaviour including drug abuse, self-mutilation, suicide attempts, impulsive spending, etc…
Individuals with BPD can be catastrophically triggered by everyday events that wouldn’t cause any amount of distress to an otherwise normal individual. A late pizza delivery, change of personal plans, snarky waitress, or a refusal to have sex can all lead to explosive toddler-like tantrums. As you may imagine, individuals with BPD have an incredibly hard time maintaining interpersonal relationships.
Unlike Bipolar Disorder, the symptoms of BPD are chronic and pervasive. Medication can be used to treat comorbidities but they won’t change the underlying maladaptive behaviors.
Latest Answers