ABSTRACT
Recurrent suicidal behavior has been termed the ‘‘behavioral specialty of the borderline patient’’ (1). Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is the only psychiatric disorder in DSM-IV defined, in part, by recurrent suicidal and self-injurious behaviors. Suicidal behavior in BPD is characterized by a high frequency of attempts within individuals, and a broad range of attempt characteristics in terms of subjective intent, objective planning, method violence, and medical lethality. Among consecutively assessed outpatients and inpatients with BPD, a history of suicide attempts has been reported in 70%, with an average of more than three lifetime attempts per patient (2,3). In community surveys, a diagnosis of BPD is a contributing factor in over one-third of completed suicides (4,5). Half of the parasuicide cases admitted to hospital care were given this diagnosis in one systematic study (6). Borderline personality disorder is also one of the most lethal of psychiatric disorders, with a suicide completion rate of up to 10% in longitudinal studies (for review, see Refs. 7,8).
