Good Psychiatric Management for Borderline Personality Disorder During the Perinatal Period: GPM-P

Women with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are especially at risk for experiencing adverse physiological, psychological, and social effects of pregnancy and postpartum. Those with BPD are vulnerable to these developmental transitions because of the interpersonal hypersensitivity that underpins the confusing oscillations of their symptoms.

Good Psychiatric Management (GPM) is a structured generalist intervention for patients with BPD found to be comparable in effectiveness to more intensive specialized psychotherapies such as DBT. GPM is adaptable to address the known vulnerabilities of patients in the perinatal period, during this critical time when mothers encountered critical transitions in identity and role transformation.

These brief, pragmatic clinical interventions can be adjunct to usual obstetric care to improve outcomes, both psychiatrically and medically. Expectant mothers with BPD and the clinical teams caring for them will benefit from the inherent flexibility of GPM, which incorporates (extra)conservative pharmacotherapy, increased family and social support network involvement, and increased attention to the social-emotional demands.