Sexual Minorities Over-Diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder

Study finds that sexual minority individuals are more likely to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder with conventional diagnostic methods.

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A recent article published in the journal Assessment explores the differences in the frequency of diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) based on sexual orientation. Sexual minority individuals are diagnosed with BPD at a higher rate, and the researchers question how the diagnostic criteria exacerbate bias and discrimination.

“Appropriately understanding the factors that are associated with BPD diagnosis among sexual minority individuals is underscored by the potential deleterious outcomes associated with the diagnosis,” the main investigator, Craig Rodriguez-Seijas, from the Department of Psychology at University of Michigan Ann Arbor, writes.
“The diagnosis of any psychiatric disorder without appropriate cultural sensitivity risks inadvertently harming consumers psychologically or socially through misdiagnosis.”

The researchers suggest a significant overlap between the diagnostic criteria of BPD and common experiences of psychosocial distress observed among sexual minority individuals. For example, sexual minority individuals are more likely to experience interpersonal difficulties due to rejection sensitivity, which may be construed to fit the BPD criteria of interpersonal instability and efforts to avoid abandonment.

Sexual minority individuals are also more likely to have higher levels of suicidality and self-harm behaviors, which fit the BPD criteria of recurrent suicidal behaviors. In addition, sexual minority individuals are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors and substance use. This can be seen by mental health professionals to fit the BPD criteria of impulsivity. The BPD criteria also include identity confusion, a normative developmental stage of sexual minority individuals.

The conventional diagnostic methods fail to address the unique risks experienced by sexual minority individuals when giving BPD diagnosis. Under the minority stress framework, psychosocial dysfunction can be conceptualized as a behavioral response to the chronic stress associated with stigma. In addition, traumatic experiences such as sexual abuse, physical assault, and bullying are significantly more common among sexual minority individuals.

“It is possible that diagnosis of BPD among sexual minority individuals reflects a predisposition by providers that is independent of psychopathology or clinical severity,” the main investigator notes. “Clinicians may misinterpret culturally normative behaviors as pathological due to unfamiliarity with cultural differences.”

The alternative model for personality disorders (AMPD) is an empirically based and pan-theoretical alternative for conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. Under the AMPD framework, BPD is viewed as a set of behavioral indicators of core maladaptive personality domains, including negative affectivity, antagonism, disinhibition, detachment, and psychoticism.

“Traditional conceptualizations of psychopathology and personality pathology which posit psychiatric and personality disorders as categorical, putatively distinct entities demonstrate myriad drawbacks,” the authors write. “The use of maladaptive personality, consistent with the AMPD approach, might be a way to assess for personality pathology that more accurately relates to the nature of personality pathology.”

Bias in the diagnosis of BPD among sexual minority individuals can exacerbate existing health disparities and risks through negative provider interactions, additional stigma, and poorer treatment outcomes. This study investigated the evidence for potential bias in conventional diagnostic methods and suggested improving the assessment, diagnosis, and clinical conceptualization of BPD among sexual minority individuals.

The study collected data from a partial hospital program and analyzed 1,099 participants’ responses. The participants provided demographic information, including age, gender, and sexual orientation. The participants were diagnosed with conventional diagnostic methods (Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorder [SIDP-IV] & Unstructured clinician assessment) and completed the Personality Inventory for DSM5 Brief Form (PID-5). The PID-5 is consistent with the AMPD approach and measures five maladaptive personality domains.

The results showed that a greater proportion of sexual minority patients were diagnosed with BPD when compared with heterosexual patients across all methods. However, fewer patients met the criteria for a BPD diagnosis based on reports of PID-5 when compared with those who were assessed with the SIDP-IV or unstructured assessment.

In addition, sexual minority patients were significantly more likely to be given a BPD diagnosis with unstructured clinician assessment. There was no significant difference in the proportion of lesbian/gay patients diagnosed with BPD with SIDP-IV.

“Our finding revealed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual patients were more likely to be diagnosed with BPD by providers than heterosexual patients,” the researchers report. “Sexual minority patients were more likely to be given a BPD diagnosis regardless of presenting personality pathology and other clinical correlates.”

The researchers also challenge the biological determinism inherent in the biopsychosocial model of BPD and suggest that psychosocial dysfunctions among sexual minority individuals may be better conceptualized as expectable reactions to stigma, trauma, and minority stress.

“Empirical studies of BPD and many other forms of psychopathology fail to attend to sexual orientation diversity within their models. An assumption of (partial) biological determinism of BPD de-emphasizes the wealth of literature that situates psychosocial dysfunction among sexual minority individuals at the feet of the structural stigma that chronically denigrates the lived experiences of non-heterosexual persons,” the authors conclude.
“The appropriate assessment of BPD among sexual minority individuals becomes particularly hazy without full consideration of the ways in which structural marginalization might be related to several BPD diagnostic criteria.”
“These results, therefore, highlight important epistemological questions about the conceptualization of BPD and personality disorders more widely, particularly among groups defined by chronic exposure to stigma, discrimination, and marginalization.”

 

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Rodriguez-Seijas, C., Morgan, T. A., & Zimmerman, M. (2020). Is There a Bias in the Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Patients?. Assessment, 1073191120961833. (Link)

11 COMMENTS

    • Sam,

      Exactly. No one should be given this diagnosis. As the author states, the diagnosis itself is associated with deleterious outcomes. The problem is not that any particular segment of people are getting diagnosed with borderline. The problem is that anyone is getting diagnosed with borderline. This single word has the potential to destroy a life. I know. It happened to me. As you said, Sam, articles like this one implicitly perpetuate the fiction that there is such a thing as borderline personality and that it’s okay to diagnose it in those that actually “deserve it”. It’s not okay to do this to anyone.

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      • To be clear, no one should be diagnosed with any psychiatric “illness”. They’re all made up.
        I did find that after my diagnosis was changed from “depression” to “borderline personality”, the treatment I received both within and outside of treatment settings was much worse. The diagnosis gave my awful family ammunition against me, “friends” started treating me like an alien, and of course the treatment from treatment providers, especially in psych wards, was horrendous. I was treated like a criminal. It was a 15-year-long terrifying experience from which I don’t think I’ll ever recover. I don’t see people or the world the same as before I had that diagnosis, and I grew up in an abusive and dysfunctional household, so I was no stranger to difficulty. I don’t trust people anymore. I have so much PTSD from the treatment. I keep to myself out of fear that the cycle will start all over again. It’s a terrible ordeal to put anyone through, diagnosing them with this so-called disorder. I believe psychiatrists are well aware of what they are doing when they make this diagnosis. Clearly they are well aware of the potential for deleterious outcomes. They seem not to care about anyone in their care.

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  1. No surprise here. BPD is little more than the ‘hysteria’ basket mental health professionals scribble (often punitively) in the files of patients who do not conform to what the ‘ideal patient’ looks like.

    Sexual minorities, like women with trauma histories, likely do not trust institutions and authority figures, and are NOT kind to those who tell them that they are responsible for their pain and need to fundamentally change themselves. After all—both groups have been harmed by others because of who they fundamentally are! So, they piss of a member of the institution who cannot believe their authority and silly opinion (formed over five entire minutes) has been disrespected. Therefore, the name of a disorder that should only be diagnosed by a provider who has observed longstanding patterns of behavior that cannot be explained by other disorders or circumstances (beginning in adolescence) appears in their file. That’s more or less all BPD means these days. ‘This patient upset me—beware!’

    I have seen SOME people exhibiting traits that match BPD with BPD. But mostly, it is a person who does not trust institutions, understands the world of mental health all too well, and behaves accordingly.

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  2. The “mental health” industry, and all its DSM deluded. I have no doubt, are the historical, and continuing, enemies of all those defamed as BPD, or with any of the “invalid” DSM disorders.

    Especially since we’re living in a society, in which the schools – and systemic DSM deluded, primarily child abuse covering up “mental health” workers – are encouraging our children to be GLBT.

    Let’s hope the for profit only “mental health” workers, schools, and religions some day garner insight into the impropriety of systemically covering up child abuse, drugging up concerned mothers of child abuse survivors, defaming and neurotoxic poisoning innocent humans, thus destroying families, then confusing their children.

    We need a return to a just society, to which the “mental health professionals” are all a hindrance, since their DSM “bible” is “invalid.”

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