Girl Interrupted Diagnosis and Treatment

In coming to a diagnosis, some things can be noted on how they got to borderline personality disorder with Kaysen.  This includes vagueness of purpose or long-term goals, uncertainty in relation to friends and romantic partners, and general instability.  Kaysen  also admits to banging of her wrist on a chair along with scratching her face because of the turmoil she felt on the inside.  In diagnosing Kaysen with these symptoms, one can clearly state that she has borderline personality disorder.  As the definition states in Comer, borderline personality disorder is when someone exhibits great instability, including major shifts in mood, an unstable self-image, and impulsivity.  People with borderline personality also become very depressed, anxious, and irritable and these states can vary on the amount of time that they last.  Other things that may occur include anger, which can result in physical aggression and violence along with impulsive anger inward by inflicting bodily harm on themselves due to deep feelings of emptiness.  In looking at Kaysen’s symptoms, she definitely causes bodily harm to herself in banging her wrist and scratching her face until it bleeds.  In determining where borderline personality disorders are on the DSM IV axis, there are nine criteria and one must meet at least five of them.  These include shifts in moods, anger that is inappropriate, self-destructive acts, self-damaging impulsive behaviors, identity disturbance, chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom, unstable and chaotic relationships, efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, and stress-related paranoid ideation or sever dissociative symptoms.  In watching the movie, Kaysen shows fits several of these criteria if not all of them in one way or another.