Borderline personality disorder features in nonclinical young adults: 2. Two-year outcome.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is thought to develop by early adulthood, and it is characterized by lack of control of anger, intense and frequent mood changes, impulsive acts, disturbed interpersonal relationships, and life-threatening behaviors.We describe data from a 2year follow-up study of nonclinical young adults who, at study entry, exhibited a significant number of BPD features.Individuals with borderline features were more likely to have academic difficulties over the succeeding 2 years, and these participants were more likely to meet lifetime criteria for a mood disorder and to experience interpersonal dysfunction than their peers at the 2year follow-up assessment.These findings indicate that BPD features are associated with poorer outcome even within a nonclinical population.Over the last 15 years, the interest in studying borderline personality disorder (BPD) has grown tremendously.The increase in the number of studies focusing on BPD can be traced back to the introduction of this diagnosis into the American diagnostic nomenclature in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980).BPD is now the most frequently diagnosed personality disorder in clinical settings, and more research is conducted on BPD than on any other personality disorder (Blashfield Widiger Linehan, Heard, Stone, 1990).A relatively neglected area of research, however, has been the assessment of the prevalence, nature, and outcome of BPD features in nonclinical (i.e., not currently seeking psychological services) young adults.It is important to conduct these studies of nonclinical young adults for several reasons.First, BPD appears to be relatively prevalent in nonclinical populations (Gunderson Zimmerman & Coryell,.1989).Second, clinical participants diagnosed with BPD may be unrepresentative because the most severe or dysfunctional cases (those that have the most frequent or lengthy treatments) are those that are most likely to be sampled in clinical studies (Cohen & Cohen, 1984).Third, evidence suggests that nonclinical young adults with BPD features present a level of dysfunction across a number of spheres of functioning that is severe enough to warrant further study (Trull, 1995). Trull (1995) reported two studies that involved the development of a psychometric strategy for identifying nonclinical young adults who exhibit significant BPD features.The implementation of this strategy results in the classification of young adults into B+