ABSTRACT
Borderline patients, their families, and themental health professionals treating them need accurate information about the long-term course of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in order to plan realistically for the future. Until very recently, such information was not available. In fact, the only information about the course of BPD came from a series of influential but methodologically flawed studies; 17 small-scale, short-term, prospective studies and four large-scale, long-term, follow-back studies. The main findings of these two groups of studies pertaining to borderline psychopathology and cooccurring disorders will be reviewed. Then the relevant results of two methodologically rigorous, large-scale, prospective studies of the course of BPD that were undertaken in the 1990s will be presented. (See Chapter 9 for a discussion of the psychosocial functioning of borderline patients over time.)
2. SMALL-SCALE, SHORT-TERM, PROSPECTIVE STUDIES OF THE COURSE OF BPD
Within this group of 17 studies, there actually are two subgroups of studies. The first group was conducted prior to the development of well-defined criteria sets for BPD and the second group was conducted after the development of replicable diagnostic criteria for BPD.
