Borderline Personality Disorder vs. Symptoms of Bipolar

Bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder are wrongly thought to be the same. Often they are diagnosed wrongly too; one is diagnosed when the other is the correct diagnosis. This is due to the similarity of the symptoms of bipolar and the borderline personality disorder symptoms.

The lesser known of the two is borderline personality disorder and it is not as widespread. Borderline personality disorder is only about 20% of the mental illness patients hospitalized every year, while 50% of the mental illness patients are hospitalized for bipolar disorder. Borderline personality disorder more commonly occurs in young women, but bipolar hits men and women equally, and in all groups age wise.

Common Symptoms
Patients with bipolar symptoms and symptoms of borderline personality disorder both have the swings in mood that can have depression, anxiety, or violent outburst with them. But the duration of these are weeks or months in the bipolar patients, whereas they only last a day or a few hours for the borderline personality disorder patients.

People with borderline personality disorder also suffer times when they have no clue who they actually are as in likes, dislikes, preferences, and personality. They may even alter their long term type goals often, and they also have trouble focusing on an activity. Being impulsive and going on excessive eating spells, expensive shopping trips, and even having high risk sexual encounters can happen. Symptoms like these can also be mania symptoms for the bipolar.

The patients with borderline personality disorder may also have spells of feeling misunderstood or mistreated, worthlessness, and emptiness. These are also symptoms of the depression that bipolar patients get.

Another borderline personality disorder symptom is how these patients deal with their relationships. They often see relationships from an extreme point of view. The patient is either extremely in love or passionately hates. A patient can totally love a person one moment, then wind up hating them the next moment just because of a minor conflict or problem. Abandonment fears can cause threats of suicide, depression, and rejection in some patients. Bipolar patients can suffer from these same symptoms.

Similarities in Treatment
The treatments for both these disorders are very similar. Most of the time it consist of medication and therapy prescribed by a medical professional. The doctor usually prefers to combine medication with therapy. The cognitive behavioural therapy, that is used with satisfactory results on bipolar symptoms, was actually designed for the patients with borderline personality disorder. Several medications may be prescribed for either disorder with satisfactory results.

Similar to the symptoms of bipolar disorder, not much is known about what causes the borderline personality disorder. A lot of controversial beliefs swirl around about this comparing genetic causes to environmental causes. The research shows that bipolar disorder can be caused by hereditary and biological factors, while the borderline personality disorder is brought on more by environmental factors or certain types of stimuli.

As you have probably noticed, several things are similar between the symptoms of borderline personality disorder and the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Often it is hard to tell the two apart even for the medical professionals. If you happen to suffer from any of the symptoms mentioned here. It is imperative that you go to the proper medical person and get a diagnosis so that you can start treatment immediately. It is important that you never try to diagnose yourself or do self medicating for any of the symptoms of borderline personality or bipolar disorder. You should always seek out the proper medical opinion. Doing it otherwise could make your condition get worse and make any treatment less apt to work well in the future.