Does borderline personality disorder exist?
by Louis C. Charland, PhD Departments of Philosophy and Psychiatry & Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) was first introduced in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980, and that basic formulation is still present in the DSM-IV. DSM-IV BPD is probably one of the most researched and prevalent psychiatric conditions in North America, yet it has no exact counterpart in the tenth edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) published by the World Health Organization (WHO). Instead, the ICD refers to “Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder-Borderline Type”, a sub-category that is not exactly analogous to the DSM-IV BPD diagnosis. The Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD) makes no mention of either the ICD-10 or DSM-IV versions of BPD, or its analogues—meaning there is no analogue for the BPD diagnosis in the Chinese classification.
