Saturday, October 19, 2013

Social experiment by Mariana Abramovic

This is not about personality disorders per se, but clearly has to do with personality. In this interesting and brave experiment by Mariana Abramovic, she gives people the opportunity to do whatever they like to her for 6 hours without resisting. What happened was not exactly pretty, but was it surprising? Watch the video and judge by yourself.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Bipolar II vs. Borderline

I didn't really think there still was a big disagreement about these disorders being distinct in nature. But I guess those voices pop up on a regular basis. This study shows, however, that bipolar II-depression patients are more likely to have close relatives with bipolar disorder than patients with a combination of major depressive disorder and borderline personality disorder (MDD-BPD). MDD-BPD patients also had a higher frequency of co-morbid axis-1 disorders than the the bipolar II-depression patients, most significantly post-traumatic stress disorder. Ratings of anger, anxiety, paranoid ideation and somatization were also significantly higher in the MDD-BPD group and in addition to that their over all functioning was lower. This certainly is evidence supporting the disorders to be different in nature.