Introduction
Borderline syndrome is a mental disorder that often first appears between puberty and young adulthood. The most common and most severe symptoms are a disturbed control function of emotions, a disturbed self-image, difficult and often unstable relationships with other people and impulsive behaviour as well as frequent self-injury with no frequent intention of suicide. Women are more often affected than men.
In extreme cases, all this can lead to impairment of social and educational or work-oriented functioning. Finally, the suicide rate in borderline patients is 50 times higher than in the normal population. As with many psychiatric diseases, the exact cause of the borderline syndrome has not yet been scientifically proven.
A connection between deviating brain structures is being discussed. The hereditary material, in conjunction with environmental influences, can influence the regulation of emotions and can be the cause of a typical pattern of behavior of the borderline syndrome. Affect regulation is the ability of people to control and process unpleasant or negative emotions triggered by certain events or experiences or by dealing with them.
In the best case, the end result is the incorporation of the emotion into the “self”. – Hereditary material (genetics)
- Environmental factorsand
- Off the average
There are also many voices in the scientific community that see a beginning of development in the temperament of early childhood. Since personality traits are often already present in the temperament of early childhood and there is a certain continuity in development, it does not seem far-fetched that temperament plays an important role as a factor in the development of symptoms of personality disorders in adolescence.
Both the temperament of childhood and the developing individual personality traits seem to reflect the same basic dispositions. The child’s temperament reveals early individual differences in, among other things, emotional response to certain events and self-control of behaviour and reactions, which may be important for the development of borderline syndrome. Both of these points are often inappropriate and conspicuous in borderline patients – while the ability to control oneself is reduced, emotional responses are often inappropriate and excessive. The child’s temperament can also be measured by the factors emotionality (the showing and feeling of feelings), activity, sociability and shyness. Emotionality refers to how easy it is for a child to experience and show negative emotions.
Cause neurosis
There is a connection to the personality trait of neuroticism, i.e. a long-lasting negative prevailing mood and pessimistic world view. Activity includes children with a high energy level, who demand a lot of attention and prefer a fast lifestyle, which in extreme cases can develop into personalities with low or no inhibition threshold. Sociability consists of the desire for social interaction and recognition.
Children with a high proportion of this factor are often open, fun-loving and outward-looking. In contrast, children with a high degree of shyness are interested in social relationships, but often find situations of social togetherness stressful and feel uncomfortable and inhibited in their dealings with others. This can also contribute to the development of a neurotic personality trait.
Various studies have shown a connection between personality traits and temperamental characteristics occurring in childhood and symptoms of borderline that appear later, but there is no conclusive and conclusive evidence of this. On the contrary, various inconsistencies occur, which may also be due to the non-uniform procedural and evaluation techniques used in the studies. Nevertheless, the factors mentioned above can predict the development and course of borderline symptoms in adolescence.
In principle, it can be assumed that the borderline syndrome develops on the basis of personality structures and traumatic events experienced in childhood or an interplay of both. Trauma seems to be the most conclusive cause of borderline syndrome. Traumatic experiences can have such a strong influence on the psyche that it is easy to imagine that the affected persons will continue to be affected by these events for a long time. Such traumas may have been extreme fear or helplessness, as is typical of abuse experiences or life-threatening situations. Added to this is the inability to process them.
