Borderline Personality Disorder

Why Are Women Diagnosed With Borderline Personality Disorder More Than Men?

Borderline Personality Disorder is diagnosed predominantly in females. There is approximately a 3:1 female to male gender ratio for this disorder.

Theories of why Borderline Personality Disorder occurs more often in women

- Sexual abuse, which is common in childhood histories of borderline patients, happens more often to women than men.

- Women experience more inconsistent and invalidating messages in this society.

- Women are more vulnerable to BPD because they are socialized to be more dependent on others and more sensitive to rejection.

- Clinicians tend to be biased. Studies have shown that mental health professionals tend to diagnose BPD more often in women than in men, even when patient profiles are identical except for the gender of the patient.

- Men seek psychiatric help less often.

- Men are more likely to be treated only for their alcoholism or substance abuse; their borderline symptoms go unnoticed because BPD is assumed to be a women's disorder.

- Female borderlines are in the mental health system; male borderlines are in jail.

(www.bpdcentral.com)

Skodol, A. & Bender, D (2003) have also addressed several theories as to the gender bias with this diagnosis. Their research on gender bias in borderline personality disorder indicates that:

- The elevated base rate of women in clinical settings may be one of the reasons why clinicians perceive more women to have BPD.

- Women and men present with different symptoms patterns, such as the criterion of identity disturbance, which tends to be significantly more common among women.

- Female patients tend to receive unwarranted diagnoses of BPD more often when the clinician is a women, which suggests less acceptance of borderline-like traits and behaviors in women by women.

- Sampling bias in research

- Biological differences in which men show more aggression and externalizing behavior patterns and women show more behavioral inhibition and