Borderline Personality Disorder and Reasons for Elevated Suicide Rate

Chapter 15: Borderline Personality Disorder
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Chapter 15: Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder is associated with an elevated suicide rate. What reasons to you believe account for this?
Suicide is the manifestation of what happens in the mind of a person. Before one gets to the point of committing suicide, they must have convinced themselves of their worthlessness (Harrington, 2001). Additionally, one must have felt an emptiness that continually reminds them of their failures.
The first reason why Borderline Personality Disorder is associated with elevated suicide rates is because of the feelings of worthlessness that become normal to a person. For example, Karen never felt comfortable alone. Any moment she found herself alone was used to continually remind her that she was a failure (Gorenstein & Comer, 2001). She blamed herself for being alone and thus dreaded these moments. To herself, she was not complete and thus needed other people to help her feel validated and important. When people came to her life, she gave herself to them fully. This means that during moments of rejection or supposed rejection, she was overwhelmed with emotions and the feelings of worthlessness came back to haunt her like in the case of Gary. To Karen, all that happened to her was her fault, and so, she felt the need to punish herself and hence the suicide attempts and physical injuries.
Secondly, the need to transfer emotional pain to physical pain is another reason why Borderline Personality Disorder is associated with high suicide rates. Everyone experiences emotional pain. The way people act or react to their problems brings about the differences (Gorenstein & Comer, 2001). For Karen, her reaction was to transfer the emotional pain to her physical body. Her goal was to make sure she suffers for whatever she felt guilty of or for the loneliness she felt. Slowly, though, the need to physically inflict pain on one’s body gets worse, and when razors...