Eating Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder

Among psychiatric disorders, borderline personality disorder (BPD) and eating disorders (EDs) are comparatively common, even in various populations with different genders and ages. The comorbidity of EDs with BPD is common and highlights potential shared risk factors, phenotypes, and behavioral traits encompassing attachment issues, adverse childhood experience, nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), suicidal thoughts and attempts, interpersonal relationship issues, and comorbid maladaptive mood, and dysregulated behaviors. BPD symptoms such as impulsivity, affective instability, outbursts of anger, and suicidal behaviors are frequently studied in the context of eating disorders. A potentially interacting etiologies which may contribute to the exacerbation of the likelihood of bulimia nervosa (BN) or BPD in the presence of each of them, are impulsivity, affective instability, and difficulties in emotion regulation. It has been suggested that BPD symptoms may lead to ED onset, presentation, and treatment course. Difficulties in emotions and dysregulated behaviors are the major shared features in BPD and EDs, including issues in recognizing emotions, named alexithymia, and emotional dysregulation. Moreover, depression, anxiety, and alexithymia are found as shared psychopathology in BPD and EDs. The construct of rejection sensitivity, an elevated tendency toward misinterpretation of ambiguous social cues as being rejected has been experimentally and theoretically linked with BPD and EDs.