Borderline Personality Disorder in the Medical Setting Unmasking and Managing the Difficult Patient

This book provides the reader with a general overview of borderline personality including: (a) a clinical definition of the disorder; (b) epidemiology (eg: prevalence, gender-specific characteristics, ethnic/geographic variation, associated clinical features such as multiple comorbid medical and psychiatric diagnoses); (c) etiology (i.e., a multi-determined disorder with strong clinical associations with childhood trauma); (d) psychological themes (e.g., particularly the evolving role of victimhood from childhood through adulthood); (e) diagnosis (i.e., criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Self-Harm Inventory, the borderline subscale of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4, and the Mclean Screening Inventory for Borderline Personality Disorder); (f) the classic presentation in the psychiatric setting compared with the "medicalized" presentation in the medical setting (the truly unique portion of the book, which focuses on medically self-defeating behaviours, somatic preoccupation, chronic pain syndromes including fibromyalgia, multiple somatic diagnoses, multiple drug sensitivities/allergies, and disability); and (g) general treatment principles in the medical setting.