An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread

By JANE E. BRODY
NYT

In the popular 1999 movie “Girl, Interrupted,” Winona Ryder portrays a young woman who tries to commit suicide, then spends nearly a year in a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

The film, based on a 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen, was gripping. But experts say it oversimplified this common yet poorly understood mood disorder.

Georges Han, a recovered patient now studying at the University of Minnesota for a Ph.D. in psychology, describes borderline personality disorder as “a serious psychiatric disorder involving a pervasive sense of emptiness, impulsivity, difficulty with emotions, transient stress-induced psychosis and frequent suicidal thoughts or attempts.”

Moods can change quickly and unpredictably, behaviors can be impulsive (including abuse of alcohol or drugs, reckless driving, overspending or disordered eating), and relationships with others are often unstable. Many patients injure themselves and threaten or attempt suicide to relieve their emotional pain.

(More here.)