Clinical specificities of patients with substance use disorder and comorbid borderline personality disorder compared to patients with substance use disorder only: a retrospective study.

INTRODUCTION: Substance use disorder (SUD) is a common condition often associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD), and patients with both disorders (SUD + BPD) have more complex presentations and poorer outcomes in treatment. Thus, there is a need to identify more clearly the clinical differences between patients with SUD + BPD and those with SUD only to help clinicians in their diagnostic process. METHODS: Data from medical files of 92 patients with SUD (SUD only: n = 42; SUD + BPD: n = 50) treated in an outpatient psychiatry and addiction treatment center were extracted to compare the differences in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, substance used, psychopathological dimensions, comorbidity prevalence, and functional impairment. RESULTS: Compared to the SUD only group, patients in the SUD + BPD group were younger, more disabled, and less satisfied with their social life. Regarding substance used, the comorbid group had more frequently cannabis use disorder and poly nonalcoholic SUD. Regarding psychopathological dimensions, the comorbid group had higher levels of impulsivity, emotion regulation difficulties and alexithymia. Finally, regarding comorbidities, the comorbid group had a higher risk of comorbid anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and post-traumatic stress disorders. CONCLUSION: While being only exploratory, these results add evidence on the impact of the BPD comorbidity in patients with SUD and underline important dimensions that should be considered by clinicians working with this population.

Case reports: Using Good Psychiatric Management (GPM) conceptualizations in the dimensional assessment and treatment of personality disorders.

Good Psychiatric Management (GPM) is a generalist clinical management approach for borderline personality disorder that incorporates common ingredients of good standard care for any psychiatric diagnosis with what works from prevailing specialist psychotherapies. Similar to all validated therapies for BPD, it relies on a specified formulation of the disorder' symptoms as arising from interpersonal hypersensitivity, to dynamically describe typical patterns of daily self- and interpersonal issues that drive the instability that defines the general personality dysfunction characteristic of the disorder. Recent adaptations of GPM have been proposed for narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, with development of similar dynamic models for both (intrapsychic coherence model and model of overcontrol). New dimensional models of personality disorder diagnosis have been developed to address limitations of categorical approach, but the incorporation of these models into usage in the delivery of clinical services (where categorical approach remains the most used) is limited. This paper describes an adaptation of GPM to two cases of personality disorder that illustrate the usefulness of GPM models for dynamic representation of complex daily fluctuations in internal psychic coherence and interpersonal functioning. Specialist psychotherapies will never meet the demands of public health needs to treat personality dysfunction, and incorporation of new dimensional models of diagnosis are needed for treatments that can provide a minimal standard of care for providers and patients.