Loneliness and Borderline Personality Disorder

This video describes the loneliness aspect we see with borderline personality disorder. When we talk about loneliness and borderline personality disorder, we're talking about an experience that is fairly common for individuals with that diagnosis. When we look at the borderline personality disorder symptom criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, we won't see any symptom criteria that used the word loneliness, but rather we see a symptom criterion that says a chronic feeling of emptiness and usually that's the one we tie to this sense of loneliness. Sometimes we also tie in the fear of abandonment with this construct. Loneliness is really about a perception of social isolation and a feeling of being alone, but social isolation is a lack of interpersonal relationships. Social isolation and loneliness aren't exactly the same thing. One can be lonely without being socially isolated, but usually we do think of the two as strongly associated. Another way we can think of loneliness is that it is a perception of a difference between how many relationships somebody actually has and how many relationships that they desire. We could also look at it in a similar way: it's about the quality as well as the quantity of relationships. Loneliness is a construct that's associated with borderline personality disorder. Individuals with borderline personality disorder report higher levels of loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness has some severe consequences, whether it's associated with borderline personality disorder or not, including: higher morbidity with both mental and physical illnesses, and higher mortality. Individuals with borderline personality disorder report smaller social networks, so they have regular contact with a smaller number of people. Individuals with borderline personality disorder generally have the same number of people available to talk to, but impaired communication ability gets in the way.