Understanding the Development of Borderline Personality Disorder from an Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), a type of personality disorder, typically experience extreme mood swings, leading to unstable personal relationships, severe morbidity, and high social costs. Given that natural selection is known to optimize survival gains, how are there still individuals whose ability to manage social relationships is broken, maintain personal relationships, and sustain survival? The current study proposes two possible hypotheses to answer this question. Hypothesis A predicts that mental disorders are caused by an inevitable genetic mutation that affects human behaviors. In this case, there were no adaptive designs of BPD. Hypothesis B suggests that BPD may be once helpful to ones survival in some environments, leading to its gene adaptation. If this hypothesis holds, BPD can be found in certain circumstances more commonly than others. The study concluded that the BPD prevalence rates found between different ethnic groups (Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian) are inconsistent, suggesting that there was an adaptive purpose for developing BPD. It also implied that the aspects attributed to the variety of BPD prevalence rates among societies might be found based on different social values. Further investigations are needed to investigate the adaptive mechanisms of BPD to help with BPD diagnoses and treatments for BPD patients in various cultural settings.